Canon Virginia Inc. strives for zero waste

This story appears in the summer 2021 issue of Plastics Recycling. Read more from the issue here.

By Karen Hanna 

At Canon Virginia Inc. (CVI), zero is a number that takes on big significance. As in zero waste, zero landfill.  

The company’s devotion to sustainability is embodied by its efforts to recover value from the high-impact polystyrene (HIPS) that makes up its toner cartridges. From the design of a new printer, copier or toner cartridge through its manufacture, a lot of CVI’s focus is on the product’s end, as the company strives to reuse, refurbish or recycle everything that passes through its facilities.   

“We’ve always wanted to be able to look at our processes and make sure that we're doing the responsible thing, the sustainable thing,” said Rhonda Bunn, senior director of human resources and corporate communications for CVI.  “... So, we recycle cardboard, we recycle the cafeteria waste. ... Any and everything that we can do as a corporation, we're trying to do.” 

Much of the recycling effort takes place at Canon Environmental Technologies Inc. (CETI) in Gloucester, Virginia, which handles an array of products. Every day, 14 semi-tractor trailer trucks visit the facility just to dump off cartridges returned by businesses, consumers and retail outlets such as OfficeMax.  

Since it opened in 1996, CETI has recycled “mountains” of material, said Tom Keegan, vice president of engineering of CVI.  

Keegan and his colleagues highlighted the cartridges as an example of the company’s sustainability success. 

“The parts that can be salvaged from the toner cartridges are salvaged and cleaned. And then they are sent back to CVI to put into other cartridges,” said Mark Beagle, senior manager for business planning for CVI. “The plastic casing … is ground and goes through a purification process through the equipment that we have at CETI, and then that material’s repelletized, and then the pellets are sent back to CVI, and then that plastic is used in new cartridge production.” 

Reduce, reuse, recycle

CETI reuses everything it can, Beagle said. 

It starts when the semis pull up.  

Multiple vision systems and vision-guided robots separate the cartridges and other products according to product type, size and the sorts of boxes in which they are shipped. The cartridges are removed from the cardboard protecting them, and CETI shreds the boxes, then sends the paper products to a third-party cardboard recycler.  

Then, the cartridges are sorted by their model numbers, which identify the flame retardants used to make them. 

“We're looking at those cartridges, identifying what model it is by either looking at the actual label on the cartridge or looking at the overall profile of the cartridge, and again, within split seconds, making the decision on what type of cartridge that is,” Keegan said. “And then we have automatic diverters that divert those cartridges to the streams that we’re going to process in their pure form.” 

Cartridges with high-value recyclable components are automatically disassembled, and a proprietary system then crushes all the cartridges, which could explode or catch fire if the aerosolized toner they release is not handled properly.  

Once the cartridges have been crushed, CETI removes the toner from them. It also separates ferrous metals from non-ferrous metals, sending both types to a third-party recycler.  

"And so, the toner goes in one direction, and we actually recycle the toner, as well. We're actually re-pelletizing toner and selling that to some customers,” Keegan said.  

CVI produces some kinds of cartridges that contain 100-percent-recycled HIPS, along with a small portion of other plastics. According to the company, more cartridges made with one type of flame retardant are returned than are needed, contributing to a feedstock of surplus recycled HIPS that CVI then sells to other companies. Meanwhile, the company receives fewer cartridges made with another type of flame retardant, forcing it to use some virgin HIPS when it makes new versions of those types of cartridges; eventually, it anticipates, both types of cartridges will be returned in volumes sufficient to support complete, 100-percent-recycled-content production.   

 “Some of the HIPS material that is not used in cartridge manufacturing, that is sold to other companies as a recycled material,” Beagle said. “The toner that is left in the cartridges, that is collected and a material, a polymer, is added to the toner, and that is repelletized, and we sell repelletized toner to companies that use it in the manufacturing of their products as it can be used as a colorant. It can be used as a filler material.” 

For the cartridges, CETI is just one stop on the circle of life. Many of them begin again, just about 20 miles away, at Canon’s facility for new-cartridge manufacturing. 

Planning for sustainability

As with all of CVI’s products, planning for the end begins at the product’s start. 

“A lot of people talk about design for manufacturing; we talk about design for recycling. What we do is we meet our counterparts at Canon Inc. in Japan, when they’re getting ready to produce a new product. And we talk about how to make that product easier to recycle,” Keegan said. 

Bunn said employees’ commitment to the cause has kept recycling at the fore of Canon’s mission. 

“For example, Styrofoam, I think our purchasing folks and some of our manufacturing folks on the floor got together and said, ‘We've got to be able to recycle this. And how do we do it?’ ” she said. “So, they got involved in this project that was really kind of employee-driven. And they found a piece of equipment, it's not very big, and it's not very attractive, but the employees now take the Styrofoam, they melt it down, and then Purchasing was able to sell that.” 

According to the company, CETI sells densified Styrofoam material to a recycling partner that further processes the material. 

CVI also is exploring processes beyond recycling, including chemical recycling and depolymerization, Keegan said. 

“Instead of just taking plastic and leaving it in that plastic form, how do we increase the value?” he said. “Some of those things are additional things that we're working at, whether it be gold, whether it be recycling toner into a different end product, or even some of our plastic into a different end product, we're really looking at the overall value-added part of the equation.” 

A CVI employee for “30 wonderful years,” Keegan said he finds gratification knowing landfill mounds are shorter due to his efforts. Over the course of his career, his company has recycled hundreds of thousands of tons of cartridges, he said. 

Even in his personal life, he said he looks at trash differently now. 

“Twenty-five years ago, we didn't have the environmental movement that we have now, and so I feel like we were sort of on the cutting edge of taking responsibility for the products that we produce and making sure that, from cradle to grave, they were dealt with responsibly,” he said. 

Contact: 

Canon Virginia Inc., Newport News, Virginia, 757-881-6001, www.cvi.canon.com