Fuji Xerox Australia Sustainability Report: Water Use Drops 34%

by | Oct 1, 2012

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Water use at Fuji Xerox Australia declined 34 percent year-on-year, according to the company’s latest corporate sustainability report.

In 2011-12 the company used 8,153 kiloliters of water from municipal sources compared to 10,905 kL of water used in 2010-11. The company attributes the reduction to greater water efficiencies at its national warehouse that saved 1864 kL of potable water and initiatives at its other facilities that combined saved 888 kL of water. The significant decrease in water consumption at the national warehouse is due to improved maintenance on the air conditioning system cooling tower as well as a continuing policy of no garden irrigation and the upgrading of water fixtures, the report says.

Other assumed reductions in water use have not been able to be collected. The company’s Eco Manufacturing Centre was unable to produce accurate water consumption results this year due to metering problems that occuerd during a during refurbishment. Fuji Xerox Australia otherwise would expect there to be a significant reduction in water use due to the 100,000 liter rainwater tanks that are connected to all of the facilities toilets and garden irrigation systems, the reprt says.

The company’s estimated use of water per employee, which is based on figures from its Brisbane, Australia, office, declined from 2.6 kL per person in 2010-11 to 2.3 kL per person in 2011-12.

The amount of waste Fuji Xerox Australia sent to landfill in 2011-12 represents a 4.2 percent increase on 2010-11 levels. In 2010-11, the company sent 526.8 metric tons of waste to landfill. In 2011-12 this figure increased to 548.9 metric tons. The company says the increase occurred despite it “placing great emphasis on improving our waste and recycling management facilities across large and small sites.”

Fuji Xerox put the increase down to a number of factors including multiple clean-ups and building works at its national warehouse in which, the report says, “little of the waste material was recycled despite adequate facilities,” and other locations encountering hurdles when trying to recycle pallets resulting in high landfill output at the start of the year.

The amount of waste the company recycled fell 46 percent year-on-year from 1,886 metric tons in 2010-11 to 1,021 metric tons in 2011-12. The lions’ share of the decrease comes from a massive drop off in the company’s pallet recycling rate for reasons described above. In 2010-11 the company recycled 992 metric tons of pallets compared to just 181 metric tons in 2011-12. The company’s cardboard recycling rate increased 4.1 percent year-on-year. (see graph, below)

Over the course of the last year, the company rolled-out a national waste contract that aligned its waste and recycling services, data and billing with a single contractor. The company hopes that this will reduce its waste-to-landfill rate in the future.

Other waste management initiatives implemented in 2011-12 include a soft plastic bailing machine and a polystyrene recycling machine installed at the national warehouse and an organic waste stream at its Eco Manufacturing Centre aimed at improving the diversion of recyclable resources from landfill.

Fuji Xerox’s scopes 1 and 2 carbon emissions remained fairly static year-on-year increasing 0.3 percent from 9,462 metric tons of CO2 equivalent in 2010-11 to 9,498 metric tons of CO2 equivalent in 2011-12. However, the company’s scope 3 emissions jumped 63.5 percent year-on-year. The majority of this increase comes from a 76 percent increase in emissions from the company’s logistics operations. The main factor contributing to this dramatic increase was the effects on product supply following the tsunami in Japan, which led to a doubling of air freight, the report says.

For Environmental Leader’s coverage of the company’s sustainability report from last year click here. A video presentation of that report put together by Fuji Xerox is available here.

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