Environmental sustainability has become an international conversation, and it’s likely that within your organization you’ve had similar conversations around how your business can improve their environment-centric efforts. Sustainability is one of those terms that has a relatively loose definition. Organizations that are actively trying to reduce their negative environmental impact may turn to sustainability best practices to help their process.
Your employees are likely driving these efforts, implementing simple updates like increased recycling, limiting the use of single-use plastics in the lunchroom, and reducing your electricity usage. You may also have compliance mandates from state or local government, or a green committee designated to drive these efforts. Even with internal and external assistance, it can be difficult to determine additional ways to help improve sustainability and reduce operating costs for your organization.
The biggest challenge for meeting these goals is often within the technology your organization uses.
PiF’s partner Ricoh, is an internationally recognized leader in technology, providing digital workplace solutions to more than 1.29 million companies across the globe. At their core, they focus on 5 S’s that make up the values and goals of their organization:
- Scalability: Ricoh provides solutions meant to grow with your business
- Security: Safely access data without compromising your security
- Simplicity: User-friendly and seamless design
- Superior Technology: Work smarter, faster, and more efficiently than ever before
- Sustainability: Solutions that are good for your business and the environment
While each of these values is of great importance, we’ll be focusing on sustainability. To help lead the office technology space on green initiatives, Ricoh recently began to take action to further drive their focus on sustainability. They have established a sustainability message, Driving Sustainability for Our Future. Through this, they are aiming to create a sustainable society and resolve pressing social issues.
In this initiative, they focus on three P’s:
- Prosperity
- People
- Planet
Through each of these focuses, they work towards a holistic sustainable solution to better the planet and your organization as well.
Excelling with Energy Star
On October 11, 2019, Energy Star published newer, more aggressive guidelines to hold organizations accountable for producing products with a minimal negative environmental impact. Because of these new standards, many firms who were previously compliant are no longer. Unlike other copier manufacturers, Ricoh was the only manufacturer to have products that were compliant with the new guidelines. These standards require products to require 35% less energy than previously. Every single device in the Ricoh IM C series of Intelligent Devices meets or exceeds these requirements. These products also have an EPEAT Gold rating as well as ROHS compliant.
Sustainability Features
Ricoh’s IM C line has specific features also allow them to excel at sustainability:
- Energy features: Polymerized PX Toners, a sleep mode timer, motion sensors, auto on/off timer, and quick start-up.
- Paper savings: duplexing, do not print blank pages, locked print, condense multiple pages, sample print
- Recycling: end-of-life equipment recycling, recycled paper compatible, consumables take-back program
- Efficiency: eco-friendliness widget, staple-free option, toner saving mode
These features come standard, and can help you achieve your sustainability goals right out of the box.
Establish habits to make an impact
Additionally, you can take steps to eliminate the need for paper entirely in certain processes. By scanning your files to email, your document management system, or other software, you can reduce the paper required to complete common day-to-day tasks.
For processes that do require paper, but don’t need to have blank backs or specific formatting, consider re-using the backs of already printed sheets. Test pages or pages that aren’t completely filled with text are perfect candidates for this. You can reduce the amount of paper you utilize while still printing the necessary information.
Evaluate your current devices
Once you have a better understanding of how Ricoh devices can help your office save money while saving the environment, it’s important to evaluate how your current devices compare. If you’re printing at a high volume and it’s driving your utility bills sky-high, it might be worth it to make a change to something more energy efficient.
If you’ve realized you’re in need of an upgrade, the next step is to find a copier dealer who can help you make the switch. That’s where PiF comes in. We’re a Ricoh dealer with the knowledge and experience to be a local provider of the latest multifunction devices.
Want to learn more? Schedule a time for us to chat about your current copier needs.
