Australian Environment Activities

As a division of Seiko Epson Corporation whose corporate roots are in "co-existence with nature", Epson Australia will actively strive to provide products and services in a manner that fully supports our corporate philosophy of protecting the earth's environment and cooperating with the local community.

To achieve its Environmental Policy, Epson Australia will:

• Ensure that environmental considerations are included in all aspects of our business planning and operations, consistent with sound business management practices and our responsibilities as a good corporate citizen.
• Strive to continually reduce the environmental impact of our business by conserving the use of raw materials and resources in our operations and services and minimising waste. This will include the promotion of recycling.
• Comply with all relevant environmental laws and regulations, ordinances, and other requirements, and work to prevent pollution and adverse environmental impacts by implementing environmental management practices and procedures.
• Work to support the intent of legislation and the policies of environmental agencies and contribute to community discussion where these relate to our operations.
• Implement and maintain an Environmental Management System in accordance with the International Environmental Management Standard ISO 14001.
• Set and use environmental objectives and targets to drive performance improvements. We have implemented monitoring and reporting procedures to communicate our performance internally and to relevant external interested parties.
• Strive to continuously improve our environmental performance and to reduce our environmental impacts through regular review of our activities, practices and procedures. We will strive to realise our environmental philosophy by having all members of the company embrace this Policy.

Environmental Achievement

As part of Epson Australia's program of environmental awareness and consideration, it was accredited to the international standard ISO 14001 - Environmental Management Systems in May 2001, being one of the first printer vendors in Australia to gain ISO 14001 certification.

Epson Australia has been recognised for its energy efficiency projects at the NSW Energy and Water Green Globe Awards, winning Gold for the Energy Smart Business Program.

This award was in recognition of Epson Australia having upgraded at least 75% of its operation to use energy more efficiently. By implementing energy efficient projects across their operations Epson Australia has, to date, saved over 690 tonnes of carbon dioxide. At the awards night, Mr Nemtzow, Director-General of DEUS made comment that.

“Epson Australia’s forward-thinking approach stands them in good stead in the years to come, because not only are they helping businesses to save money on their energy bills, they are ahead of the game in teaching others how to manage their resources more efficiently.”

“Epson Australia is making an important contribution to the NSW Government’s long-term strategy to reduce the State’s greenhouse gas emissions,” he said.

Epson Australia did not stop there.  It continues to set aggressive targets for reduction of CO₂ gas emissions.  It achieved over a 10% reduction in 06/07 and is on target to achieve a further 7% reduction in the 09/10 year.

In the period 2008/09, Epson Australia re-used or recycled (diverted from landfill) over 70% of all waste emanating from its Head Office site in North Ryde.

Environmental Activities

As part of its Environmental Management System and Corporate Social Responsibility, Epson Australia is currently engaging in the following environmental activities.

Cartridges For Planet Ark

Epson is a founding member (since March 2003) of this initiative to recycle Epson’s genuine ink cartridges and toner cartridges.

The aim of the Program is to prevent cartridges from entering the waste stream and thereby reduce the potential environmental impact arising from the end of life disposal of cartridges.

Collection boxes for the C4PA program can be found in participating Australia Post, Officeworks, Harvey Norman, Dick Smith, Tandy, JB HiFi and The Good Guys stores.

The Program provides a valuable cartridge recycling initiative for the following:

- End user consumers
- Corporate Customers of OEM partners

The recycling service is free for the above and is funded by the OEM partners of the Program in an effort to encourage end user consumers and specific corporate customers to divert their used cartridges from Landfill.

To remove the risk of product that is not the target of the Program being included in the Program, the Program partners, sponsors, and the recycler agree to the following policies:

1. The Program manager must only accept product under the Program when each of the following conditions are met:
a) The product is collected by the Program Manager or their agent.
b) The collection is from an authorised Retail or Corporate collection point registered by the Program Manager or OEMs.
c) The product is collected in a collection box provided by the Program Manager.

2. The Program Manager will not accept, under this Program, any cartridges from other commercial businesses or companies, other than those listed in paragraph one above.

The intention of this clause is to ensure that cartridges from bulk collectors, recyclers, remanufacturers, refurbishers or resellers are not accepted as part of this Program. The cartridges are to be collected directly from end users.

Epson is a foundation sponsor of this program, and to date the C4PA program has diverted almost 10 million cartridges from landfill. Now in its ninth year, the program aims to collect 17.5million cartridges!

Visit www.cartridges.planetark.org for more details.