How can you help to reduce or avoid plastic waste?

The topic also received international attention during this year’s
World Oceans Day, which always takes place on 8th June.
One of the action themes for 2024 was to encourage governments and corporations to phase out single-use plastic for the benefit of the oceans and the wider environment. 

Ideally plastics usage would no longer be necessary, but they are used in many forms in products and are often not yet replaceable, so it is important that all businesses, organisations, and individuals understand the impact of plastic use and address solutions to reduce their use whenever and wherever possible.

Ways to reduce plastic use in your business

Every business, organisation, and individual can play their part and take responsibility for minimising the use of plastics to help tackle the waste plastics problem. With this in mind, there are a number of pro-active steps that your business can take:

1. A plastics audit 

As a business, it is important to gain a better understanding of the plastics used by your operations – this could be products and packaging, but also the items used at your facilities (e.g. food and drinks containers, pens and stationery, single-use plastic bags etc). Once you accurately understand your plastics usage you can gain insights into more sustainable alternatives to help reduce the generation of plastics waste.

2. Avoiding single-use plastics

Following an audit, it will be easier to measure how many single-use plastics are being use. There are a number of ways to avoid single-use plastics with good examples being reusable coffee cups, encouraging the team to use a water dispenser instead of plastic bottled water, or introducing waste bin liners made from recycled and/ or bio-based materials. If you sell physical goods, it is also worth switching to recycled packaging and encouraging customers to reuse bags or containers wherever possible.

3. Consider plastic-free alternatives

Whether it is your own products, or supplies that are purchased from other parties, it is worth checking for plastic-free alternatives. Stationery, for example can use a lot of unnecessary packaging (or be made of plastic itself), while food and drinks can also be culprits. Wood and paper alternatives, or those that can be cleaned and reused (such as glass or ceramic cups and plates) are sensible alternatives.

4. Ensure staff awareness

Education on recycling (and clear labelling of what can and can't be recycled) are key steps in ensuring everyone plays their part. Equally, it is also important to ensure your customers understand the importance and the impact of recycling as well, working in collaboration together to further reduce plastics use.

5. Incentives

People love rewards for a challenge and positively tracking how well individuals or teams do with recycling can create a competitive but fun challenge to raise awareness and enhance performance. By adding a sensible incentive (perhaps extra vacation days or vouchers etc) will help to generate further interest and awareness.

6. IT devices

When you purchase new equipment (be that laptops, printers, smartphones etc) you could select those made with a significant share of recycled plastics. The best option is to choose refurbished equipment, where possible, which reduces the amount of plastic (and also of rare materials and elements) that needs to be disposed of or newly produced.

Using your buying power to influence suppliers

All businesses (whatever the size of type) have the power to change the use of plastics through the supplies or services they choose to purchase.
56 companies are responsible for greater than 50% of the branded plastic according to the result of a study published in the ‘Science Advances’ journal. The study analysed global plastic litter on beaches, parks, rivers and other terrestrial systems from 2018 to 2022 to identify the brands found on plastic items in the environment. The surveyors recorded the brand or trademark on each plastic item wherever possible. They found that 50% of the items were unbranded and therefore only the other 50% could be traced back to companies. A total of 19,586 companies were responsible for this branded plastic waste, of which the just mentioned 56 companies were responsible for more than 50% of the plastic waste.

According to the just mentioned study there is a significant link between annual plastic production and the amount of plastic pollution. Clearly large corporations have the power and decision-making clout to make changes to their production or usage of plastics that can have a big effect on the environment, society, and the planet as a whole.

Therefore, it is important that individuals and businesses of all sizes make appropriate choices on the products they buy and who they buy them from, to support the most sustainable and conscientious approaches to plastic use. Their purchasing choices should help to reduce their plastic waste or ensure that the products they buy contain more reusable and/or recycled plastics.

Konica Minolta initiatives to reduce the use of plastic

Konica Minolta considers plastic pollution of the oceans as a major problem worldwide. In addition, its raw material for production, namely petroleum, is a finite natural resource. The company therefore considers plastic to be one of the high-risk materials. As a result, it has set its goal to reduce its use of the earth’s natural resources by at least 90% by 2050. Konica Minolta aims to achieve this goal by the continued increase in the use of renewable resources such as recycled materials and bio-materials. Plastics are currently used for example in printing devices and consumables such as cartridges and toner drums. Konica Minolta is addressing a number of initiatives:

1. Greater use of recycled materials

Konica Minolta has been working for years to develop technologies to produce highly functional recycled plastic and is expanding the use of recycled plastic in many products. In addition to transforming PET and PC plastics from beverage bottles and gallon jugs into exterior materials for MFPs, the company is also recycling ABS resin recovered from used game machines into inner casing materials. The company has developed technologies to ensure that the recycled plastic components have the necessary strength, flame resistance and moulding usability. For the bizhub i-Series, which was launched in 2019, the percentage of PCR¹ was raised to about 70% for PC/PET plastics in exterior materials and to about 95% for ABS plastic in inner casing materials. Overall, the Office devices consist of up to 42.9% recycled plastic (or up to 40.4% according to German Blue Angel Mark)². Sales of products utilising these high-functional recycling technologies reached approximately 440 billion yen (~ 3 billion Euro) in fiscal 2022. This represents 66% of Konica Minolta’s Digital Workplace and Professional Printing business sales. 

In addition, Konica Minolta recycles polyethylene milk containers and turns them into toner bottles for MFPs. The company developed washing technology that removes the smell of milk and minute cells that would lead to quality degradation and established a mass production system in Mexico and Malaysia. The company has succeeded in raising the percentage of PCR in the raw material used for toner bottles up to 60% and intends to increase it to 100 % in the future.

2. Reducing weight and size

The company is also working to make its products smaller and lighter, as this also helps to reduce the use of plastic. The AccurioPress C7100 digital printing system’s width has been reduced by about 15% and its weight by about 25% compared to conventional machines. In the Office area, the weight of the bizhub C650i for instance was 9% less than its predecessor bizhub C658 and the weight of the bizhub C658 was 50% less than its predecessor bizhub C654e.

3. Collecting and reusing products

It is also important that used printing devices and consumables are either recycled or reused to also prevent them from becoming single-use plastics. Konica Minolta has a programme for collecting used MFPs, printers and other products from customers through the Konica Minolta Group's sales companies around the world. These products are recycled by contractors in line with legal requirements and obtain approval in each country. For example, in Japan, after collecting used MFPs and printers from eight collection centres, the used products are recycled by seven designated contractors. Konica Minolta provides them with Disassembly Guides to facilitate the best possible recycling of all components. The collected products are taken apart by hand, rather than crushed mechanically, to raise the recycling rate. After dismantling, metal and plastic parts are separated, for example, and many are reused as materials. Those that cannot be reused as materials are reused as fuel. In fiscal year 2022, Konica Minolta sold a total of 69.0 thousand tons of office equipment worldwide. Meanwhile, 13.6 thousand tons of end-of-life office equipment was recovered by major sales companies in Japan, China, the United States, and Europe. Of this amount, 13.5 thousand tons of material were recycled. 

Konica Minolta’s services also include recycling print consumables as part of the
Clean Planet Program. These consumables are collected at the end of their usage and recycled whilst toner bottles are prepared for re-use as Konica Minolta offers the refilling of empty toner bottles for many of its office devices. 

The
bizhub Refreshed
 programme reconditions end-of-life printers to offer a more sustainable choice, whilst preserving reliability and delivering cost savings over purchasing a new alternative.

4. Increased lifespan of products

Konica Minolta is also endeavouring to increase the lifespan of its products. An example is the process unit required for Electrophotographic image forming for MFPs, which has a limited lifespan and sometimes needs to be replaced. Konica Minolta has been working to extend the life of MFP drum units, which is particularly short. With the bizhub i-Series for example, Konica Minolta has achieved a 20% longer lifespan compared to a previous model. In addition, by also installing a mechanism to predict when the unit is likely to wear out, the customer can replace it at the optimal time and avoid image defects.

Research into innovative technologies to solve the plastics problem

Along with these initiatives to reduce the use of plastic, Konica Minolta also invests in research and development into new technologies aimed at addressing the plastic problem. R&D spending on projects that contribute to addressing climate change totalled 27.8 billion yen (~ 192.7 million Euro) in fiscal 2022, accounting for approximately 43% of the Konica Minolta Group's total R&D spending.  

In order to reduce the use of plastic, Konica Minolta is currently researching two key topics: improved methods for recycling plastic and the production of biomaterials.

One example is the Finland-based Konica Minolta group company
Specim, which has developed hyperspectral imaging (HSI) technology to make sorting recycled plastics easier, faster, and more reliable. The camera technology reliably detects the composition of plastics that are being recycled by using spectral wavelengths, including non-visible ranges, and powerful analytical software to sort materials accurately and quickly. This includes the world’s first HSI camera capable of sorting black plastics, enabling the processing of greater amounts of recycled materials more efficiently. 

Secondly, Konica Minolta supports the area of bio-manufacturing to enable the manufacturing of raw materials for pharmaceuticals, building materials, and industrial products made from biomaterials instead of from fossil resources like petroleum. This also contributes to the reduction of plastic usage and at the same time to the reduction of CO2 emissions. The company therefore recently launched a collaboration laboratory with the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, a pioneer in biomanufacturing research. Here, Konica Minolta’s sensing technology monitors the process the metabolism of microbes.

Being mindful of the use and disposal of plastics

Although plastics damage the environment, they often still play an important part in society and cannot yet be easily replaced everywhere. In addition to research into alternative materials, it is therefore vital that the proportion of plastic in manufacturing is reduced and that products are reused or recycled. If this is not possible, plastics must be disposed of responsibly in order to continue to reduce the use of fossil resources and drastically reduce plastic waste. 

The use of plastics needs to be carefully considered by everyone. Consumers can make informed purchasing decisions that support better use of the circular economy - for example, by buying refurbished or remanufactured equipment or paying attention to recycled proportions in products and return their products into the recycling loop.

Organisations, businesses and consumers in the printing area also need to be aware how to dispose of plastics once they have finished using them. They should also demand appropriate systems from their manufacturers to help with this.

To learn more about how Konica Minolta is embracing the Circular Economy through the reduction, reuse, and recycling of materials please visit: 
Circular Economy & Resources | KONICA MINOLTA