Epson's fine print and extra-fine carbon footprint

It’s so easy to be skeptical about sustainability these days, especially when big corporate giants are more compelled to claim jolly greenness in an increasingly eco-sensitive climate. Epson, a company known for allowing us to more easily waste paper through its slew of high-performance printers, seemed no different. That was until I couldn’t ignore the fine print, however — evidence of Epson being a true eco-enterprise.

On a sheet of transparent plastic where the image of fruits had been printed, you couldn’t deny the vivid difference Epson was trying to make for the environment. It was as if the sheet had already been made with the image on it, the print-out taking on almost organic form with the page. This was natural printing on so many levels, which was why this product of the Epson booth I had discovered at the Eco-Products Exhibition 2010 in Tokyo recently blended in well with all the other world-healing endeavors that spanned everything from paper soda cans to Nissan cars gunning for zero emission.

The ultra-precise Inkjet printing was possible through Epson’s Micro Piezo technology, which, through an applied voltage, produces mechanical pressure in order to determine ink droplet size and distribute it more efficiently onto the page. Because of the controllability of ink output, soaking can be avoided, thereby making the use of both sides of a page a no-brainer rather than a sign of stinginess.

Time for a cool change

Environmental impact replaced by virtual impact: Panorawalk technology lessens carbon footprints, because you’re treading environments and collectively sharing in virtual viewing. A new step to a paperless society.

With the Japanese company’s vast embrace of office culture through its enduring printer and projector technologies, it treats the little things as serious business. Then again, you’d expect this from an enterprise that sprung from watches, Epson’s mother company being Suwa Seikosho Co., once just a company that manufactured Seiko timepieces. This had begun from the literal time stamp Seiko had developed for the ’64 Tokyo Summer Olympics: a digital stop clock that was also a printer. The device’s never-before-witnessed capability would soon lead to companies seek the technology out. From Seiko’s first EP-101 miniprinter (EP being an acronym for “electronic printer”), which would find itself an ubiquitous component of calculators, was born Epson — a derivation of “Son of Electronic Printer.”

Just as Seiko’s timepieces had begotten printers, the low energy consumption of wristwatches had given rise to Epson’s green initiative. The blue planet in Epson’s logo is an apt representation of where Epson began: the lush, bucolic “Oriental Switzerland” that is the Nagano Prefecture. This is where Epson’s global headquarters is located; where I’ve been brought after a two-hour bus ride from Tokyo in order to validate Seiko Epson Corporation’s Executive Officer Akihiko Sakai’s description of the company as one that is “very, very countryside but now very global.”

“To me, ecology and economy is the same,” Sakai had said over drinks last night. Walking towards a museum in Epson’s Global Headquarters that showcased the products its put out since its inception, the hallway’s glass encasement providing a view of pristine Lake Suwa and the Japanese Alps beyond, I’d begun to understand Sakai’s statement. As the Monozukuri (“product creation”) museum had revealed through trailblazing tech like the “world’s first colour printer to be used in space,” Epson’s commercial ubiquity, especially in creating information-related equipment, was nonpareil. Yet as Sakai’s very country company would have you know, it believes in reaping what it sows.

About 45 minutes from Epson’s Global HQ is the Kanbayashi recycling plant. The plant doesn’t just stand harmoniously with the mountains surrounding the rustic little town it’s in but as a concrete testament to the company’s Environmental Vision 2050. It isn’t just compliance with the basic statutes of corporate responsibility but a total envisioning of the company as one that is green through and through; the aim being to reduce 90 percent of CO2 emissions from the life cycles of its every product and service.

Revving the youth to recycle: At the Epson booth in Tokyo’s Eco-products exhibtion, children throw old ink cartridges of any brand into take-back boxes for recycling.

While Epson has been relentless in its recall of products, recycling is simply a safeguard of sustainability in its environmental vision. Environmental impact and application precede creation, as can be noted from a new line of products that are not only reusable and recyclable but wherein space and resources are saved through their considerably reduced size and high energy efficiency, respectively. New 3LCD projectors, for example, were miniaturized by about 30 percent yet packed in E-TORL lamps that improve light projection efficiency by 20 percent. These project images more vividly but that are easier on the eyes, not to mention easier on the environment.

Similarly powerful but power-saving are the newer Epson printer models, which, through the aforementioned Micro Piezo technology, use 89 percent less power by eschewing laser beams and the spoils of thermal inkjet printing. Also, having multi-tasking Inkjet printers such as the Epson ME Office series is an all-in-one approach to avoiding wastage, given such Eco features as direct printing (print from a memory card or immediately after using its scanner) or duplex printing (using both sides of a page). And to assert the all-out integration of environmentalism into its products, Epson’s high-volume built-in ink tanks are proof that the company’s eco-advocacy is not an option but an actual function. The Epson L100 inkjet printer yields 10,000 pages (and the equivalent of 17 standard black ink cartridges in each black ink bottle), thereby rendering ink cartridge replacement unnecessary.

Taking the tech back for good

Of course, for the actual products that do need replacement, Epson’s devised a recycling system where no broken machine is left un-recovered. Customers in countries where Epson’s recovery program has been implemented can simply request for a pick-up of the no-longer-functioning equipment to be brought to recycling centers for reutilization. The sense of sustainable community can moreover be felt with Epson’s Ink Cartridge Homecoming Project, which knows no boundaries through its planned expansion across Asia and the cooperation of five other print device manufacturers: Brother, Canon, Dell, HP and Lexmark. While consumers in Japan can drop their used cartridges at more than 4,500 recovery boxes in post offices across the country, Filipino customers can head to one of the Epson take-back bins located in SM malls’ Cyberzones.

“Your printer can be an expensive watch at one point,” remarked the company representative who’d taken me around the Kanbayashi recycling plant. And those ink cartridges a hoarder like myself accumulates at home? They can be reincarnated as a plastic container or hanger, a pair of Epson-brand ballpens, or the parts of a new ink cartridge.

Surveying a tire stopper created from recycled materials, the actualization of Epson’s advocacy was hard to deny. It was concrete proof of the company’s sticking to its guns just like its stuck by its three core businesses — printing, projection, and quartz sensing — rather than bounding into the trendy gadget arena. Their enviro-consideration is certainly not new. Before the bandwagon of eco-anything had reached its full throttle today, Epson had, in 1993, achieved the complete elimination of ozone-harming CFCs from all its worldwide production processes. Since then, initiative has been put into action, from introducing paint-eliminating housings for its products to the fostering of an environmental community, be it through a reforestation project in Indonesia or a coastal cleanup in the Philippines.

With all this tree-hugging, however, you’d think Epson had been compromising innovation for idealism in its product; that by simply focusing on reversing environmental impact, the company had lost its forwardness in creating new technology. But forwardness for Epson wasn’t about incessantly throwing new products to customers, I realized; it was about the future. Considering global warming hit closer to home for Epson what with the lake across its headquarters increasingly failing to produce ice ridges during winter, an uncertain future needed a vision like the company has now.

The clarity and brilliance of that vision had become apparent in the projected image I’d seen at Epson’s Innovation Center. Transmitted through non-LED projection onto a massive screen, drawings could be replicated to reach life-size proportions for presentations so handouts and other collaterals were rendered unnecessary. Experiences could also be recreated for audiences through Panorawalk technology; the touch of pen to screen allowing you to navigate your way through architecture or environment and share what you see with the people around you.

Through all this, Epson was allowing the digital to pave the way to a future that needn’t deplete resources; where environmental impact was replaced by virtual impact. Yet if indeed most of our world is gone by 2050, Epson’s provided us one consolation: the earth we once knew could at least be projected and simulated to vividly remind us of what we’d lost.