Remanufacturing, Renewable Energy, and AI Lead Trends Among Print Industry Sustainability Leaders

December 4, 2024
Press Release, Sustainability, Trends

Quocirca Sustainability Leaders Study Reveals Key Focus Areas

London, UK, 3rd December 2024: Quocirca’s Print Sustainability Leaders Study 2024 finds that vendors are maintaining a strong focus on sustainability at both the product and the corporate level. Amid steadily rising customer expectations, vendors are making notable progress in areas of circularity and emissions reductions.

Quocirca’s third Sustainability Leaders Study tracks the evolution of vendor sustainability initiatives in a comprehensive report detailing corporate strategy, circularity approach, customer and channel sustainability support, and identifying vendor-specific areas of innovation.

Key findings include:

• Product circularity initiatives are maturing, with remanufacturing a common focus: Some vendors already have well-established remanufacturing and refurbishment programmes in place and are working to expand these. The rest of the industry is following their lead, with several companies reporting new or developing initiatives. This focus is complemented by design-for-reuse initiatives, as vendors ensure that components have commonality so they can be incorporated in remanufacturing/refurbishment programmes. The percentage of post-consumer recycled (PCR) plastic content in new devices is also increasing, with some vendors reaching more than 50% PCR content.
• The shift to renewable energy is gathering momentum. One leading vendor has successfully transitioned to 100% renewable energy use. Others are making progress and in vendors with multiple product areas, the printing divisions are typically leading the shift to renewable energy. Several vendors are acting directly to deploy solar installations at manufacturing sites, and others are innovating in carbon capture and storage technologies.
• AI is being proactively applied to sustainability challenges. Several vendors are building AI into their sustainability offering including in MPS servicing, support, and optimisation, virtual customer assistants, on-device machine learning, intelligent capture software, and device security.
• Good progress against net-zero targets. Leading vendors have announced accelerated net-zero targets, and the majority are making good progress against stated ambitions.

Quocirca CEO Louella Fernandes said: “It is encouraging to see innovation and continuing momentum around the pursuit of sustainability in the print sector, especially in the application of artificial intelligence to key challenges. Remanufacturing is growing as a focus, too, despite Quocirca research showing that it is not yet a top priority for customers.”

The top priorities for customers when evaluating products on sustainability terms are energy consumption, device longevity, and sustainable ink or toner. These are all areas vendors have focused on, with the majority of devices holding Energy Star of equivalent ratings and several vendors announcing longer-life products or product life extension options in the past year. Where sustainable ink and toner is concerned, vendors continue to work on improving recycling programmes and incorporating recycled content into new ink/toner products.

Remanufactured devices are a top three consideration for only 14% of IT decision-makers. This rises to 19% for refurbished devices and 23% among French respondents, reflecting French regulations mandating the inclusion of refurbished devices in public sector technology procurement deals.

Louella continues: “Vendors can do more to raise awareness of the high-quality performance of genuine remanufactured and refurbished devices, and the measurable reduction in their environmental impact compared to new devices.”

Opportunities in Sustainable Print

Quocirca’s study also identifies opportunities for vendors to improve performance in areas where customers and partners are seeking support. These include:

• Transparent data on device and solution performance: 83% of decision-makers say it is important that they get environmental data on the print infrastructure – a figure that rises to 93% among C-level executives. However, the lack of environmental data available on printers and MFPs is cited as the second biggest challenge associated with reducing environmental impact after cost. Several vendors already provide or are developing calculators to provide customers and/or channel partners with clearer information on device or solution impacts, but there is scope to go further.
• Channel enablement programmes: The channel is a critical route for vendors to communicate the benefits of sustainable choices in print infrastructure. While some vendors have robust programmes in place, there is scope for others to build a clearer proposition for partners to share.

Quocirca’s Vendor Landscape provides a view of leaders, major players and contenders in the industry with respect to sustainability. The vendors included in the analysis are: Brother, Canon, Epson, HP, Konica Minolta, Lexmark, Ricoh, Sharp, Toshiba, Xerox.

Quocirca’s Sustainability Leaders 2024 Report includes full profiles of each vendor, covering strategy, product sustainability and circularity, supply chain initiatives, recycling and remanufacturing, customer services, channel services and key sustainability partnerships. It also provides an overview of their published sustainability goals. Recommendations for buyers and suppliers are included.

This report complements Quocirca’s Sustainability Trends Report 2024. Together these reports provide a comprehensive overview of buyer expectations and vendor performance in the critical area of sustainability.