Printer tells government to get serious on waste
DAVID
Finn, managing director of printer-maker Kyocera Mita Australia, thinks
the country is a long way behind global best practice when it comes to
waste management.”We’re very lax in Australia, and I think the Federal
Government has got to be accountable for it,” Mr Finn says, citing
European rules on reducing hazardous materials in products that are not
mandatory in Australia.Mr Finn is no less scathing of state
governments, describing the NSW Government as “atrocious”, in part for
its decision to drop environmental considerations from big information
technology orders.Japanese-based Kyocera says toners for its laser
printers are cheaper to replace than rivals’ and also dissolve into
water vapor in 30 years when discarded, compared with 900 years for
those made by competitors. Even so, it has lost contracts to rivals to
supply printers for “literally 50¢” cheaper.”We’ve had many meetings
with the NSW State Government,” he said. “We ask: ‘Why buy other brands
with the toner problem?’ They say: ‘We don’t care.’ They’ve got a
capital budget and a recurrent budget for the consumable. There’s no
care and that’s the problem.”
Australia throws away about 18
million toner cartridges a year, or enough to fill the MCG to a depth
of five metres, Mr Finn says.Among contracts that Kyocera missed out on
were those from state environmental protection bodies, although it did
win an order from the Austin Health Group, which runs the Austin
Hospital.”The corporate world is taking this far more seriously than
the Government,” Mr Finn said.Another advantage claimed by Kyocera is
that its printers produce lower carbon dioxide emissions. “Everything’s
engineered down to produce less waste,” he said.