Konica Minolta Business Solutions Europe announces that since the introduction of its ''Enabling Carbon Neutrality'' programme five years ago, the company and its customers together have already offset more than 30,000 tons of CO2 emissions1. This corresponds to a distance in excess of 93 million kilometres with an average passenger car, which is the equivalent to approximately 2,300 trips around the world (along the equator) by car. Customers from sixteen countries in Europe have made a significant contribution to this.
As part of the United Nations' 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), this is also anchored in ''Climate Action'', one of the six SDGs that Konica Minolta Europe focuses on – alongside ''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. ''We intend to achieve our main goal of avoiding and reducing, substituting and compensating CO2 emissions with a series of sustainable measures'', emphasises Olaf Lorenz.
Compensating for unavoidable CO2 emissions
The ''Enabling Carbon Neutrality'' programme is one of these measures. Customers joining this 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. This project in cooperation with ClimatePartner helps fight global warming in two ways: firstly, the act of burning fuel to generate electricity causes significant amounts of CO2. Secondly, the Caribbean island also has to import those fuels from abroad, which results in an additional burden for the climate. The project's positive impact extends beyond climate protection: it creates local employment opportunities and entails the modernisation and support of local infrastructure.
The ''Enabling Carbon Neutrality'' programme is also part of Konica Minolta's bizhub ECO service, 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. Already seven countries in Europe offer this service so far. Konica Minolta not only sells this service to its customers, it also uses it at its headquarters in Langenhagen.
Moreover, since 2018, the company's entire European headquarters is 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 world-wide. January 2019 saw the company join RE100, thereby committing to source 100 percent 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, Konica Minolta's long-term environmental objective, Eco Vision 2050, plans to reduce CO2 emissions by 80% until 2050 (compared with the 2005 level). The company 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 a major area where 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 while being supported by Konica Minolta remotely. More than 3,000 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 here 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 have to come from different locations.
The fact that its sustainable efforts are paying off has been confirmed this year by Konica Minolta's renewed listing as one of the "2020 Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World".
[1] As of 8 December 2020
More information on Konica Minolta’s sustainability activities to find here: https://www.konicaminolta.eu/eu-en/sustainability
