Climate change and climate mitigation

We're taking action on the climate change challenge 

Konica Minolta is rising to the climate change challenge by working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions throughout the lifecycle of its products.  

Our aim is to avoid and reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions as far as possible in the first instance. Secondly, we aim to substitute GHG-emitting power sources with renewable energy. 

 

We're reducing our energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions 

We've initiated a number of measures to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.  

Net Zero by 2050 

We aim to achieve net zero in Scope 1, 2 and 3 by 2050 in product development, procurement and manufacturing, sales and services, and product use. Our starting year for this calculation is 2005, when we set up our Eco Vision 2050 environmental policy and produced 2,067,000 tonnes of CO₂ emissions. In 2022, we produced 851,000 tonnes CO₂ – a reduction of 58% compared to 2005.  

Raw materials and the manufacturing processes 

As part of our Sustainable Factory Certification scheme, we're striving to make our 11 main factories more sustainable, including reducing CO₂ emissions. Since 2005, we've reduced those emissions by 108,000 tonnes; and four factories have achieved Sustainable Factory status. 

AIRe Link for remote diagnostics 

 AIRe Link is a remote diagnostics tool that replaces physical visits. Using AIRe Link, we can support customers remotely to quickly identify and solve problems on their print devices. Since its introduction in 2020, the service has saved:  

• More than 8,900 on-site customer visits across Europe 
• Around 310,740 kilometres on the road 
• 140 tonnes of travel-related greenhouse gas emissions 

Find out more about AIRe Link. 


 

Towards 100% renewable energy usage 

We're a member of RE100, a global initiative that brings businesses together in a commitment to obtain 100% of their electricity from renewable energy sources.  

• Our European headquarters and many subsidiaries already use 100% or nearly 100% green electricity (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain and Sweden).  
• Two of our factories in China, one in Malaysia and one in France use 100% renewable energy, which means that 50% of the MFPs and all production printing devices for the European market (on a value basis) are produced with renewable energy. 

We're empowering our customers with products and services reducing the environmental impact 

To help our customers transform their printing operations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, offset those that can't be avoided, and transparently meet their own environmental reporting obligations, our products and solutions are designed to deliver low emissions throughout their lifecycle. For example: 

• Products are made from fewer, more easily recyclable raw materials 
• Products weigh less to reduce consumption and transport emissions and end-of-life disposal 
• More economical toners (such as the Simitri® V range) help to reduce consumables and energy waste 

These steps reflect our commitment to avoiding and reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the first instance.  

Lower energy consumption and CO₂ emissions during printing 

During printing, the largest energy consumption – over 60% – occurs when the toner is fixed to the paper. With our polymerised Simitri® V toner used in the bizhub i-series (our latest MFP generation) we've reduced the fixing temperature by about 15°C compared to previous models. Combined with a new fixing device, this helps to significantly reduce the MFPs' weekly TEC (typical energy consumption) value. The reduction in power consumption has resulted in our customers producing up to 25% (varies by model) less CO₂ emissions in operation compared to previous models. 

Power Save settings 

Power Save settings help you optimise management of your bizhub MFPs' energy consumption. Depending on your device, you'll have access to some or all of the following settings to help you reduce energy usage: 

• Low power mode – automatically turn the display off after two minutes instead of 15. 
• Sleep mode – set sleep mode to kick in after two minutes instead of 20. 
• Power-saving fax/scan mode – the fusing unit is the biggest consumer of power in the device. Instead of keeping it permanently heated up, change the setting to keep the temperature low. 
• Timer and calendar function – the low power and sleep modes have a timer and calendar function that allows the system to be activated on a daily or weekly basis, or according to the calendar date.  
• Dynamic Eco Timer – manages the sleep and operating mode times for each day of the week. Enhanced by a learning function, it automatically adapts to your actual usage based on a four-week analysis. 
• Eco Print – when the system is in sleep mode, the control panel doesn't automatically activate if a print job comes in. To minimise unnecessary power consumption, power is provided to the required device components only. 
• Eco Meter – displays information such as toner and paper savings and summarises the times in operation and sleep modes for the device, an account, or a user. Visualising he contribution to the environment in this way helps to create and maintain environmental awareness. 

Eco-Calculator for emissions transparency 

Our Eco-Calculator tool calculates paper and emissions savings between devices, which gives customers transparency on the usage phase emissions of our devices before they buy.