Canon on Forbes 'Top Genuinely Green Companies' List

Forbes, the magazine which is best known for ranking the world's richest individuals and its most successful corporations has listed Canon, the well-known manufacturer of cameras, photocopiers and other electronics devices as one of the world's top ten most genuinely green companies. With a selection from a very wide spectrum of industries, Forbes singled-out Canon's environmental activities which are at the heart of what it does as a company. These include the Environmental Planning Center and the Environment Promotion Center in the US, which enable Canon to keep track of its environmental performance as well as Canon's publication of an annual sustainability report, published in both English and Japan.

The Background - Canon Already Widely Recognised for its Environmental Leadership

It was only last year that the UK's leading Sunday broadsheet, The Sunday Times, placed Canon as the tenth most environmentally-aware business in its UK-focused survey - The Sunday Times Best Green Comapnies List. One stand-out feature of Canon's UK operations were the outstanding levels of environmental awareness among Canon's Reigate staff, as well as the collective activities of employees when it came to reducing environmental impact by sharing transport to and from work for example.

Earlier this year, the Environmental Protection Agency(EPA) in the US, who are best known for the Energy Star logo which they award to the top 50% of devices for energy efficiency performance, awarded Canon the 2011 Energy Star Award for Excellence in Energy Efficient Product Design. Canon's accomplishment was recognised at a special awards ceremony in Washington DC in April.

Forbes' Insights

As well as highlighting the already widespread recognition for its environmental efforts and the Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star Award for Excellence, Forbes pointed to Canon's policies at its US corporate headquarters in the US stating,

"The Japanese camera and electronics manufacturer, Canon, has implemented an Environment Planning Center and Environment Protection Center at its Corporate headquarters..."

Forbes commented that is these core institutions which provide the means for Canon to monitor its environmental performance and also pointed to the comprehensive annual sustainability report, published in both Japanese and English, which provides extensive disclosure on Canon's greenhouse gas and CO2 emissions.

Bunji Yano, Senior Director and General Manager at Corporate Communications, Canon USA commented,

"At Canon, our business is driven by the goal of fostering a sustainable environment while delivering world-class digital imaging technologies...This recognition further validates our commitment to the environment and preserving our plant as a whole."

Canon's Environmental Achievements for Office Devices

Even in a part of the electronics industry which is known for oustandingly high levels of energy efficiency when it comes to device running as well as environmentally-conscious design and build, Canon has consistently stood-out for energy-saving and sustainability innovations across all of its devices - from photocopiers and multifunction printers to scanners and desktop printers. For all office equipment, Canon's Life Cycle Assessment System aims to assess and to minimise carbon emissions at every stage of a photocopiers's development - from the processes involved even at a device's conception through to the carbon impact of delivery to the eventual Canon Business Solutions Partner. Some paticular highlights of Canon's efforts when it comes to energy/environmentally-conscious design and build - power consumption on imageRUNNER Advance photocopiers has been cut by 65% relative to equivalent devices even 5-10 years ago and Canon is now the first photocopier manufacturer to be sucessfully deploying 'bioplastic' parts in the construction of all imageRUNNER Advance photocopiers range.

On the centrality of the environment, Canon's Yunichi Yshtake has previously commented,

"Guided by our corporate philosophy of kyosei - 'all people, regardless of race, religion and culture, harmoniously living and working together into the future' Canon's commitment to the environment is reflected in our ongoing efforts to develop products that incorporate sustainable life-cycle planning and improved resource efficiency from the initial concept to post-consumer phases."

Falcon wishes to congratulate Canon on its inclusion in the Forbes Genuinely Green Companies List.

For the full version of this article, please visit:

http://www.falcon.co.uk/news/general-news/canon-on-forbes-top-genuinely-green-companies.htmlAbout the Author

Jeremy Samson is an imaging technology expert writing extensively on the latest developments in the document managment industry.

How the Photocopiers Industry Authority, BERTL, Picks the Best

When reading about Canon's recent success at BERTL's 'Spring Pick' Awards a month or so ago, it quickly became apparent that BERTL, who are now the major assessment authority within the photocopiers industry, have made some pretty significant changes to the way they judge performance for the world's major photocopiers manufacturers. In many ways echoing the view of Trevor Dodsworth, Canon UK's Head of Product Marketing, who recently spoke of Canon's own device product development drivers, BERTL are placing ever more emphasis on end-user needs than whatever the rest of the industry's own internal performance criteria happen to be at any given time. BERTL and Art Wynne, the company's President, very kindly agreed to shed some light on how the world's leading photocopiers manufacturers are being assessed today.

BERTL

For those entirely new to photocopiers or those looking at photocopiers for the first time in a long time, BERTL, which stands for Buisness Equipment Research and Testing Laboratory Inc and they do exactly that. BERTL provides laboratory testing of both devices and software solutions with the objective of producing indpendent product evaluation reports and comparative analyses. Manufacturers possess no influence over BERTL's evaluations and the company prides itself on the rigour of its research and analyses.

The focus of BERTL's efforts are not the manufacturers but the end-user. All reports, customer satisfaction research, product ratings and its industry-renowned awards scheme are conducted entirely at BERTL's expense and for the benefit of the company's global subscribers. Covering all of the world's major manufacturers and software producers in the business equipment field, BERTL provides a highly comprehensive website, containing evaluation reports, data, vertical market research and news on all office equipment from photocopiers, MFP's, printers, document scanners, fax machines and even wide format printers.

BERTL's Assessment Rationale

For many looking to buy office devices and who do not want to take a chance on whichever salesman approaches them first, BERTL provides an essential one-stop-shop in the BERTL Awards for determining the best devices around in any given year. Canon's success at this year's BERTL Awards revealed some interesting changes to the way the company makes its assessments. BERTL outlines this on the 'Awards' section of its website,

"Keeping up with the times and the demands of its end-users, BERTL left behind the simple speed and feed productivity artificial reliability tests and theoretical SRP pricing lists and focused on the end-user and the business dynamics when putting together the year's 'Best of the Best'"

It is very clear, BERTL has made great efforts to broaden and deepen its assessment criteria. Speed in particular, which has started to plateau in the last few years anyway, particularly when it comes to office photocopiers and MFP's, is no longer the 'be-all and end-all'. As the explanation continues,

"While it may be easy to divide up the market into speed groupings, it can often place devices of very different capabilities side-by-side."

Art Wynne, President of BERTL, elaborated,

"Speed is no longer the primary consideration for end users. They are concerned with a far broader range of criteria - if a device can reproduce colours accurately (especially logos), if a device has adequate security measures...what finishing options are available (so that a whole job completed at the device), how easily jobs on a device can be monitored and whether a device has 'green' policies to ensure that the overall impact on the environment is minimised."

Wynne added,

"While these are just a few of the overall concerns end-users may have, BERTL uses 11 different criteria for testing the devices we issue reports on."

But Wynne was also very keen to stress the growing importance of context within the industry. While many organisations will require more-or-less the same 'basics', different sectors understandably have differing priorities when it comes to office technologies. Wynne continued,

"As for the vertical market applications and business benefits there are unique considerations for different markets... For instance, in the Architectural, Engineering and Construction (AEC) vertical, there is a need to know precisely how accurate the scanning is, what types and sizes of media a device can accommodate, how much room a device needs to have for planned to be scanned-in and printed-off and lately, if there's an ability to scan-to or print from the cloud. In the medical and legal verticals, there's a definite need to know about the security features."

While BERTL today make a very useful destinction between desktop, workgroup, department and production it's very clear from Wynn's analyses of the best assessment criteria that the most impressive devices today not only need to be multifuntional but also in a way multi-'vertical' too, responding adequately, convincingly to the very real and varied needs of the economy's different business sectors. While there will inevitably be a greater emphasis on some features than others in particular verticals, it's clear that from BERTL's assessment criteria, the real skill for today's manufacturers is to provide all.

It's impressive to see that BERTL who are relied upon by organisations across the globe for their scrutinizing eye have evolved such an evidently rigorous judgement criteria. It's interesting to note as well, much as Canon outlined in a recent article, speed for BERTL no longer seems to be the primary, 'trump-all' consideration for most end-users.

Falcon would like to extend its thanks to Art Wynne and the team at BERTL for sharing their insights and welcomes any enquiries about the latest crop of 'BERTL's Best' award-winning Canon imageRUNNER and Canon imageRUNNER Advance devices, available on photocopier leasing packages or to buy.

About the Author

Jeremy Samson is an imaging technology expert writing extensively on the latest developments in the document managment industry.