Driving Sustainability in Wide Format Printing with Canon’s Innovative Solutions

Our wide format production portfolio was recently recognised with a Keypoint Intelligence BLI 2024-2025 Pacesetter Award in Wide Format Sustainability, for Product Innovation. Globally, we were recently awarded with the EcoVadis Platinum Rating for our sustainability efforts, placing us within the top 1% of companies assessed, with an overall score in the 99^th percentile.

We’re continuously innovating our products to meet sustainability best practices, right from our flatbed Arizona range and roll-to-roll Colorado M-series, to our technical document printers such as the colorWAVE, plotWAVE and our entire imagePROGRAF range – which services wide markets from CAD and poster printing to photo and fine art. A good example of our innovation, which is being driven both by our ethos to support our customers’ businesses to grow and develop as well as from a sustainability point of view, is our increasingly modular approach to product design and making new features available as field upgradeable, both for our Arizona and Colorado products. As a result, the level of a customer’s investment in Canon technology can scale with the needs of their business and gain access to the latest innovations and benefits that brings to their business. As a consequence, they don’t have to reinvest in completely new hardware or have to recycle or dispose of their existing technology. Our customers can therefore be reassured that our technology meets their sustainability goals without compromising on performance.

Starting with the product design, we look for ways to optimise processes to help with energy savings. For example, our UVgel technology designed for the Colorado range uses 50% less energy compared to traditional inks. This is because no heat is required to cure it, it dries instantly on the substrate making it a very competitive ink option in the industry, helping businesses to save on energy costs.

UVgel technology also operates and produces output with zero volatile organic compounds (VOC) emissions or hazardous air pollutants – offering an odourless and sustainable alternative compared to other ink technologies. This provides customers with the reassurance that the applications you print can be used for a variety of purposes – even indoor use in sensitive environments such as hospitals and schools as they are GREENGUARD Gold certified.

Within our technical document solutions portfolio, our colorWAVE printers use CrystalPoint technology with non-toxic TonerPearls. This helps support a healthy work environment with no ozone emissions, nearly dust-free operation and no odours, making them ideal for office settings.

The plotWAVE T-series also has an ENERGY STAR certification, with its Radiant Fusing technology reducing energy use. The plotWAVE T-series can print on uncoated or recycled paper and offers good de-inkability to support paper recycling.

And it’s not just inks we develop to be environmentally conscious; our range of Arizona printers use VariaDot technology which uses up to 50% less ink than fixed dot six colour flatbed printers. This is another innovation that helps businesses save on ink usage, helping to bring down expenditures.

We’re continuously developing our technology and looking at ways to make our printers more energy-efficient. For example, our imagePROGRAF range has been built with many sustainability benefits making it an environmentally conscious choice. All new models have been designed for lower power consumption compared with previous models. The imagePROGRAF GP (7-colour) ¹, PRO, TZ, TX, TM and TC series all meet the requirements for EPEAT Gold certification in the United States under the international EPEAT eco-label. And the sustainability benefits continue through to the packaging which is free from expanded polystyrene (EPS).

These benefits also extend to the software, PRISMA Tech Suite for technical document printing and PRSIMA XL Suite for large format graphics, which are designed to help Print Service Providers (PSPs) manage their print operations easily and efficiently. High-quality previews and easy job configuration help to ensure first-time-right prints, reducing misprints, errors and media wastage.

Canon’s ambition is to become a circular business, where every single product and material is designed, created, reused, repaired, and recycled in a closed loop. Through innovative manufacturing, we design out waste and help keep our products and materials in use for longer. An example of this is the remanufacture of our flagship Arizona range, where we create devices which have up to a 32% lower CO₂ footprint than a newly manufactured model.

By constantly evolving our technology and processes, and incorporating new features, we’re helping customers to optimise their processes for more sustainable business operations. We’re making it easy for our customers to make environmentally conscious choices. Whether it’s our energy efficient and odour-free UVgel technology, our dust-free TonerPearls, or our technology innovations such as VariaDot technology.

While traditional wide format technologies, applications and processes were more resource, material and energy intensive, Canon’s technology delivers significant advantages. Our wide format technology portfolio and teams are ready to support you with your wide format application needs.