Helping print to ‘close the loop’ with recycled steel

Steel is an incredible material. Even if you’re not the kind of person who ponders such things, it has an impact on your life in some way – from cans and cookware, buildings and bridges to planes and… printers. It’s extraordinarily strong, versatile and reliable.

But did you know that it’s also one of the most recycled materials in the world? There’s a really good reason for that too. It can be melted down and re-used endlessly without losing any of its excellent qualities, most notably strength and durability.

And this is what we want to see much more of going forward because, although steel has been transformative for our world, the initial process of making it from raw materials is high in emissions and energy intensive. Recently, great strides have been made to try and change this, but recycling plays a critically important part in making steel more sustainable. And where it can be reused, it should be reused.

Bringing recycled steel to our printing products

Earlier this year, we announced some big news on this front and will be using scrap-recycled steel in our printing products, such as home inkjet printers, large-format inkjet printers and commercial printing presses. It’s the proud beginning of a transition to using recycled steel across a wider range of products in the future.

So, how does this happen? And why is recycling steel a better option? Traditionally, both new and recycled steel is produced by using ‘open hearth furnaces’, which heat up the raw or recycled materials to an incredibly high heat by burning gas or oil. It’s a process which takes anything up to twelve hours to achieve, emitting high levels of CO2 in the process. These furnaces also need a lot of water for cooling and there are by-products to dispose of in the process.

All in all, it’s no surprise that the industry has been long seeking a viable alternative to this means of production and recycling. And while it’s clearly not quite there yet, the use of electric arc furnaces (or EAFs) is very much on the rise. Indeed, it’s sheets of steel from these kinds of furnaces that will be finding their way into our printing products, reducing our reliance on what are known as ‘virgin materials’, while also lowering emissions. We’ve found that the CO2 from the production of electric furnace steel sheets is about a fifth of those made using a blast furnace.

An important challenge

To give you an idea of what is involved in in this production cycle for us, we have a group company, Canon Ecology Industry Co., Ltd, which is responsible for receiving used office Multi-Function Devices and removing its refined steel content, which is then sent to Tokyo Steel, an electric furnace steelmaker. They put it through their EAFs and return it to us as sheets of steel for use in the development, design and manufacture of our new products. So far, we have sent over 5000 tonnes of steel scrap to them for recycling – that’s the equivalent of over 3300 cars! When you consider the size of the average office machine, we think that’s quite an achievement.

Overall, this improved ‘closed loop’ way of working with steel, the way we receive it, recycle it and subsequently use it has been the culmination of many complex changes across our business. For example, to ensure our customers see no difference whatsoever to the quality of our machines, we have painstakingly studied the characteristics of these electric furnace steel sheets and adjusted our manufacturing methods appropriately.

All part of the bigger picture

Our corporate philosophy of Kyosei – living and working together for the common good – teaches us that what is good for the planet is good for business. So, we have been continually working to reduce our lifecycle CO2 emissions per product for over 16 years, aiming for an annual improvement of 3%, which we’ve met and exceeded.

We keep a close eye on our resource recycling rate, by measuring the percentage of recycled materials used, based on the weight of the products. Our goal is to be at 50% by 2030 and we are making good progress, having increased from 16% in 2022 to 20% by 2025. Of course, this is not just a measure of our steel recycling efforts, and we are investing in improvements in recycling metals and plastics at our recycling sites around the world.

Of course, we are investing in and developing our products, so that our customers are always on the cutting edge. But we’re also designing new processes and technologies to help us do this in the most sustainable way. By continually looking at our products across their whole lifecycle, we aim to reach net zero CO2 emissions by 2050.

Learn more about Canon’s approach to circularity and sustainability.