Konica Minolta Business Solutions Europe has announced that since the introduction of its ‘Enabling Carbon Neutrality’ programme five years ago, the company and its customers from across 16 European countries have together already offset more than 30,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions. This equates to travelling more than 93 million kilometres in an average passenger car – the equivalent to approximately 2300 trips around the world (along the equator).
Olaf Lorenz, senior general manager, Digital Transformation Division, commented: ‘We are delighted with this result. We take our responsibility to reduce our impact on the environment very seriously and it shows that our efforts are paying off. However, offsetting unavoidable CO2 emissions is only the last step. That is why we are focusing primarily on avoiding and reducing energy consumption and substituting CO2 emitting power sources with green energy.’
Konica Minolta’s efforts on this front address ‘Climate Action', one of the United Nations' 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The company also has a specific focus on five other SDGs: ‘Responsible Production and Consumption’, ‘Quality Education’, ‘Gender Equality’, ‘Decent Work and Economic Growth’, and ‘Partnerships for the Goals’. The SDGs were developed by the United Nations to have a worldwide holistic strategy to overcome the key global challenges on an environmental and social level.
The company is running a number of initiatives to address ‘Climate Action’:
Compensating for unavoidable CO2 emissions
Customers joining the ‘Enabling Carbon Neutrality’ programme support a gold standard certified compensation project in Aruba: a wind farm with a total capacity of 30 megawatts that effectively reduces the island's dependence on diesel and other fuels for power generation.
The ‘Enabling Carbon Neutrality’ programme is also part of Konica Minolta's bizhub Eco service (that will be available in the UK in 2021), which includes a pre-set eco configuration of colour multifunctional peripherals (MFPs) and the cooperation with Treedom. For each service sold, one tree in Kenya is planted, and as well as selling it to customers, the company supports this scheme directly by using it at its headquarters in Langenhagen.
Since 2018, its entire European headquarters has been carbon neutral. All emissions, from energy consumption to staff commuting and business travel, are offset.
Substituting CO2 emitting power sources with green energy
To substitute its CO2 emissions, Konica Minolta is shifting towards the use of alternative energy sources worldwide.
January 2019 saw the company join RE100, thereby committing to source 100% of its electricity consumption from renewable sources by 2050.
The company's European headquarters as well as its subsidiaries in Germany, the United Kingdom, Austria and most locations in France and Sweden, are using electricity from renewable sources.
Avoiding and reducing energy consumption
In terms of lowering its CO2 emissions, the company’s long term environmental objective, Eco Vision 2050, plans to reduce CO2 emissions by 80% up to 2050 (compared with the 2005 level). It was able to surpass its medium term target of 40% set for 2016 with 49% in emissions’ savings.
The Covid-19 pandemic has also revealed major areas in which business travel emissions can be saved.
Konica Minolta supports this with its remote visual support tool AIRe Link. This tool enables companies to identify or solve problems on their print devices themselves, whilst being supported remotely. More than 3000 on-site customer visits have been saved across Europe since February 2020. In addition to detecting malfunctions on MFP or production print devices, AIRe Link can also be used for devices or machines in other industries. By offering AIRe Link as a free beta version, customers can also benefit from this tool.
Another example is hosting virtual meetings instead of face to face ones. With its virtual collaboration tool Workplace Go, Konica Minolta can help organisations effectively improve their CO2 footprint by, for instance, reducing business travel for meetings where employees must come from different locations.
The company’s strategic partners are also playing an important role. For example, in the UK Relay Technical Transport has introduced a brand new co-branded Mercedes-Benz tractor unit to its fleet, which runs on HVO (Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil) and is used exclusively for Konica Minolta consignments. This eco friendly synthetic paraffinic fuel is of very high quality, stable and composed of 100% sustainable raw materials. As an alternative to diesel, it offers a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of up to 90%.