Canon Europe Green Procurement

Green procurement is one of the most important factors of our environment. Based on this belief, Canon has from as early as 1997, promoted various environmental strategies in all areas of corporate activity. These are guided by its corporate philosophy of "Kyosei", along with the Canon issued "Global Canon Green Procurement Standard".

Based on that standard, Canon Europe established its green procurement system which aims to achieve the Canon objective for the EU RoHS compliance for all new products from 2005 onwards.

Canon Responsible Paper Purchasing Requirements
Being a responsible company, Canon Europe has chosen to follow WWF's GFTN (Global Forest & Trade Network) Guidelines for responsible purchasing of forest products for its operations.

As Canon’s main use of forest products is limited to copying and printing paper and packaging materials, we are implementing a strict set of criteria for origin of the pulp, the paper products and the suppliers.

The criteria are implemented in a stepwise procedure, which started in January 2005.

The first step in the procedure is the introduction of an on-going supplier assessment scheme. Production conditions, geographical data and environmental management will be evaluated, as well as their products with respect to origin, purchased volumes, values, product qualities, performance and formats.

Based on the assessment, we are able to select the preferred suppliers or paper products depending on environmental performance, relationship and business capability.

The sourcing criteria used to eliminate the unwanted paper qualities are implemented in the following order of priority:

1. Legal sources
2. Known sources that comply with GFTN guidelines
3. Sources in progress to credible certification
4. Credibly certified sources (FSC)

Review of criteria and setting of targets for improvement will take place annually and the results of the activities are published in the Canon Sustainability Report.

For the compliance control, we make use of the auditing procedures in our EMS according to ISO 14001 which are implemented in the complete European sales organisation.

The requirements are implemented at a pan-European level and used as rules for paper purchasing within Canon’s European affiliated and related companies.

Environmental Activities