Canon will begin using recycled steel material (electric furnace steel sheets) in some printing products, including office multifunction devices (MFDs), home inkjet printers, large-format inkjet printers and commercial printing presses to be released in 2025.
Going forward, Canon will gradually increase the number of products using recycled steel.
Electric furnace steel sheets are recycled materials produced in an electric furnace from steel scrap that has been collected from used products. Its use thereby reduces the input of new resources and increases the resource recycling rate.
In addition, since CO2 emissions from the production of electric furnace steel sheets are about one-fifth of those from blast furnace steel sheets, their contribution to decarbonisation is attracting attention.
Steel is the second most used material by weight in Canon’s printing products, following plastic, and the company has optimised the processing method so that they can be used in products.
The production of electric furnace steel sheets requires steel has been thoroughly separated from other materials including plastic and copper. Currently, Canon Ecology Industry, one of Canon’s group companies, finely separates steel scrap from collected used office MFDs and sells the refined steel scrap to Tokyo Steel Manufacturing, an electric furnace steelmaker. The total amount of collected steel scrap provided to Tokyo Steel from April 2020 to March 2024 was more than 5 000 tons.
Canon will supply steel scrap to Tokyo Steel and, in turn, use the electric furnace steel sheets produced by Tokyo Steel to develop, design, and manufacture more sustainable products thereby promoting the recycling and effective use of limited resources.
The resource recycling rate is a numerical figure indicating what proportion of the sales volume by weight of Canon’s Printing Business utilises recycled materials or components. Canon has set targets of 20% for 2025 and 50% for 2030, after recording a value of around 16% in fiscal 2022.
Pursuing those targets, its globally located recycling operation sites are working to improve the sorting accuracy of recycled resources (ferrous, non-ferrous, plastic, etc.), improve the reuse rate of parts in recycled office multifunction devices, and increase the type and production volume of internally recycled materials. As a result of these activities to improve reuse and recycling, the resource recycling rate in 2023 improved to approximately 17%.