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Year 2050 - Extra-Long-Term environmental vision
Ricoh
 In many instances the industrial world is endeavouring to transform itself into
a sustainable, recycling-based society, while promoting the understanding that
the most vital issue will be to control environmental impact to levels within the
earth’s self-recovery capabilities.
The Ricoh Group, a full-services document management solution provider and
office equipment manufacturer with globalised operations, has not only achieved
compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, which came into effect in 2005, and other
international laws and regulations, but is further committed to the “Three P’s
Balance”, the goal we have set for achieving equilibrium between planet, people
and profit. In the coming decades, we intend to share our vision for the ideal
society and global environment of the future.
One of the ways is by extending our long-term vision to what we see as the
furthest practical limits, to goals for the year 2050.
This may indeed seem daunting. How does a company even begin to set target
values to be achieved four decades from now? Ricoh adopts a back-casting
method, which first sets final goals and then determines target values as
milestones to be reached on the journey to those goals.
 These goals are to be achieved through steadfast and long-term commitments.
For example the Environmental Action Plan, put in motion in the fiscal year 2005,
calls for the environmental impact levels in the business year 2000 to be reduced
by 20% by the fiscal year 2010. Then, taking this further, based on the estimation
that business will expand at 8% or more annually, Ricoh adopted an “integrated
environmental impact” - encompassing CO2 emissions, use of chemical
substances and so on - as an index for setting target values.
Ricoh currently calculates integrated environmental impact using EPS
(Environmental Priority Strategies in Product Design), an integrated analysis
method, developed in Sweden that is compliant with ISO 14040.
An integrated approach
To succeed in reducing the environmental impact of all business activities in
terms of absolute values, the Ricoh Group understands that a piecemeal approach
is unlikely to work. Promoting reduction of CO2, or resource conservation, on a separate basis might achieve targets in a narrowly defined area, but
the risks are the expense of an increased load on the environment
in some other area and it is necessary to identify the environmental
impact of all business activities. Then, from a comprehensive
viewpoint, the initiatives to be taken at each stage of business are
determined. As goals based on units or factors might not be effective
in practical terms, absolute values for environmental impact are
needed as well.
 For it to achieve its goals while promoting sustainable environmental
management, Ricoh will also need to continue business and achieve
growth as a company. By promoting sustainable environmental
management, economic values are generated through activities that
will benefit the environment.
From Passive to Responsible stage
Ricoh is currently at the third stage in its environmental conservation
efforts. Initially these efforts represented a “Passive Stage“, in
which the main motive was social pressures - in the form of laws
and regulations - as well as through business competition in the
marketplace. Then, adopting more initiatives, Ricoh moved to a
second, “Proactive Stage,” in which we became driven, out of a sense
of mission as global citizens, to begin adopting self-imposed measures
aimed at reducing the environmental impact of products and business
activities.
The third is the “Responsible Stage”, where goals encompass aggressive efforts to
grow as a company through efforts at sustainable environmental management
that generate economic values through
our environmental activities.
Guided by the global vision underscored
in the “Three P’s Balance”, and publicly
committed long-term goals to be
achieved by the year 2050, Ricoh
is looking towards the future with
confidence that actions in motion today
will set the pace for a better, cleaner and
more sustainable world tomorrow.
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