Research and Development

One of the top goals of sustainable development is reducing our dependency on petroleum consumption. Along with climate change concerns, energy consumption carries immense economic consequences. Today’s high oil prices not only increase the cost of transportation, they also raise the cost of the plastics that have become ubiquitous in modern civilisation. Most plastics used in the bottles that we recycle, the clothes we wear and the packaging we use are composed primarily of petrochemicals.

The Ricoh Group is pioneering new products and services that replace petroleum, shrink carbon emissions and help reduce our collective ecological footprint. “Manufacturers are responsible for selecting materials used in their products,” states Tadakatsu Harada, R&D Engineer with Ricoh’s Core Technology Research Centre. “I think we must take the initiative in using new environmentally-friendly materials, thus contributing to improving society.” This was no small task, since Ricoh discovered that roughly half of the company’s environmental impact was linked to the raw materials embedded in its products.

One of Ricoh’s most remarkable success stories is the commercialisation of plant-based resins in copier parts derived from corn. Harada and his colleagues spent three years perfecting this plant-based plastic to ensure it was sturdy enough and could be fire-resistant, before taking the product to market in 2005 with the release of Ricoh’s digital multifunction copiers.

Ricoh is also designing a growing list of new products consistent with the company’s Year 2050 Extra-Long Term Environmental Vision. The group has chosen to focus on the following areas:

• Energy conservation
• Resource conservation and recycling
• Pollution prevention
• Paper reduction