How Canon USA Has Slashed its Energy Consumption

Thursday, 21 July 2011 16:00

Photocopier News - General News

In February this year, Canon Copiers provided its readers with tips and advice to cut their office energy consumption and environmental impact in an article entitled, "An Environmental Black Hole? - What Can be Done to Limit Environmental Impact in the Office...?". Now, Canon USA, the world's largest Canon corporation outside of Japan, has announced its own agressive energy saving strategy, with full details of how the company has been able to cut costs and save energy and emissions across their major US office locations. Canon Copiers, the leading UK photocopiers supplier, hopes the steps Canon USA has taken in its own effort to tackle energy consumption, will be of guidance to other large office-based companies in the UK looking to cut their costs and conserve power.

Canon USA has five major US office locations including the company's headquarters in Lake Success, NY. Its office energy saving initiative which was conceived in 2008 has had incrdible results, with reported savings of 2.7 million killowatt hours of energy from 2009-2010 across the five locations and saving around $300,000 in utility bills over a two year period, which is enough energy to power the Lake Success HQ, the largest Canon USA office for four months.

The process began with something of an energy audit across the four selected regional Canon US offices - Irving, Texas; Irivine, California; Jamesburg, New Jersey; Itasca, Ilinois and the Lake Success, New York headquarters to evaluate those areas where energy practice could be improved and almost immediately embarked upon changes to address those areas of concern for energy consumption. Further, following in the example of Canon UK, last year acclaimed in the Sunday Times Best Green Comapnies List, Canon USA expanded the scope of its environmental training, covering office energy and resource consumption and to improve awareness of the various techniques and methods which can help to reduce materials consumption - be that paper, toner or staples...

But the core areas for Canon USA's efforts have been across four key fronts:

1. Lighting: Canon embarked on a drive to replace all its office light bulbs with high efficiency, low carbon alternatives. In addition, Canon installed automatic switches which use motion sensors to switch lighting off when rooms are not occupied. Areas that did not necessarily require lighting were selectively removed, deactivated or reduced altogether in areas with good levels of natural light and low-traffic, non-working areas, hallways for example.

2. Computer Monitors: Cathode ray tube screens are not only much larger than the modern LCD equivalent but also far less efficient. Canon USA, over the course of the campaign, replaced 4000 cathode ray tube monitors with LCD screens, freeing up space and saving electricity. The monitors that were replaced all found homes at local schools and charities, so that waste could be avoided and product life extended.

3. Document Management: In total, Canon USA was able to remove over 550 desktop printers for service by replacing these multiple small devices with single Canon imageRUNNER and imageRUNNER Advance multifunction printers/photocopiers. Canon also installed the workflow solution, uniFLOW 5.0 to manage all output devices. Among its numerous workflow capabilities, uniFLOW is able to route jobs to the most energy-efficient devices when they're available, which can be determined by establishing a baseline of energy consumption which takes into account paper, and toner use and device power consumption. Switching to duplex in 2010 also saved around 1.6 million sheets of paper.

4. General Office Operations: Canon USA has limited the hours during the business week that its buildings are lit. Rather than keeping lighting on longer across whole buildings, staff that are required to stay on longer in the evening are requested to inform facillities staff if lighting is required beyond 'lit hours'. The automatic lighting switches ensure that in areas that have them, unoccupied areas are not lit.

Canon Copiers hopes Canon USA's own example of how it could save vast energy across its major office locations will provide an example for sound energy saving policy for companies the world over.

For any information in the Canon imageRUNNER Advance photocopiers featured in Canon's case study or the workflow solution please contact Canon Copiers. Canon Copiers supplies the full range of Canon monochrome photocopiers and colour photocopiers.