Croxley Recycling inks deal with Ricoh

Media Release

Wednesday 15 July 2015

Croxley Recycling inks deal with Ricoh

Ink and toner recycler Croxley Recycling’s expansion into e-waste has been boosted by a significant agreement with Ricoh New Zealand.

The agreement with the technology company will see Croxley Recycling collect and recycle all Ricoh e-waste nationwide, the first such deal the business has signed. This agreement sees Croxley Recycling collect all Ricoh e-waste from its nationwide dealer network.

E-waste includes discarded computers, office electronic equipment, mobile phones and other electronic devices.

Croxley Recycling, an arm of stationery supplier Croxley, recycles imaging consumables, such as toner cartridges and full-scale printer dismantling and recycling. Croxley Recycling works with the IT consumables to provide tailored services and already operates toner cartridge collection and recycling schemes with Ricoh, Canon, Brother, Konica Minolta and Sharp.

Croxley Recycling has been operating for eight years and developed New Zealand’s largest network of 14000 collection points including businesses of all sizes, schools, universities, hospitals, government departments, banks, home users, retailers and is free to consumers. It accepts and processes cartridges from all brands.

Croxley Recycling was the first operation in New Zealand to be accredited Environmental Choice for a process and supports worldwide best practice recycling greater than 99% of all materials processed through its consumables facility.

Through its schemes, Croxley Recycling diverts more than 400,000 cartridges (200 tonnes) of recyclable material including non-biodegradable plastics from the landfill every year.

Croxley Managing Director David Lilburne says the e-waste agreement with Ricoh is a significant step for Croxley Recycling.

He says the timing is perfect as Croxley Recycling prepares to relocate its recycling plant from the North Shore to Croxley’s new facility in West Auckland.

“The new premises offer significant growth opportunities in terms of process space and allow for increased capital spend,” Lilburne says.

“We have just purchased a new shredder, compactor and granulator. This will support our growth plans for 2016 onwards.”

Lilburne says a significant part of recycling is the security of waste product pathways and finding uses for recycled product, as part of the product’s overall life cycle.

For example, metal and circuit boards are separated for recycling and plastic is sent to local manufacturers to be incorporated into items such as coat hangers and fence insulators.

Another of the company’s business partners has developed a pathway for waste toner powder to be used in the production of building material.

Ricoh Sustainability and Communications Champion, Charley Peace says, “Product stewardship is a huge part of the sales process for Ricoh and we’re proactive in the way we seek to handle all of our waste.

“It’s clear that the government will have to make e-waste a priority product as New Zealand has one of the fastest growing waste streams in the world, so we’re just trying to make sure we are compliant and working on the issue. We want to reduce our environmental impact wherever we can and Croxley has offered us a reputably strong way to continue tackling our e-waste strategically”.

Growing Croxley Recycling is one part of Croxley’s strategic growth plan over the next year, which includes a corporate re-branding and expansion into new product lines in the education sector. Croxley is working with partners such as Brother to increase school awareness of ink cartridge recycling and an easier pathway for parents to recycle via collection points at local schools.

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Croxley Recycling Accreditation

In 2012 Croxley Recycling achieved the Environmental Choice licence EC-55-12 ‘Recycling of imaging consumables’ licence. New Zealand’s only ‘Type 1’ Eco label confirmed, through independent third party auditing, the integrity of the Croxley process. This was followed by an additional ECNZ licence in 2014 – EC-56-14 ‘End of life ITT Equipment Recycling, which is based on worldwide best practice, including the AS/NZS 5337 – 2013 Standard. These licences are supported by the Croxley Organisations Environmental Management System, Enviromark Diamond.

Croxley

Croxley is New Zealand’s largest stationery wholesaler and with a history in New Zealand that stretches back almost 100 years. Croxley’s iconic brands such as Olympic, Warwick and Collins are the stories of New Zealand pioneering entrepreneurs and businesses. Over time these household brands have held various associations and gone through mergers however they now all reside under the umbrella of Croxley. Croxley is a subsidiary of United States based Office Depot Inc.

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