Product Recycling Activities in Japan
Promoting Product Recycling in Japan
As an enterprise with official designation for wide-area industrial waste disposal in Japan, Fujitsu has developed a nationwide recycling system based on Fujitsu Recycling Centers and other facilities, and engages in various kinds of contracts for accepting industrial waste for appropriate processing throughout Japan.
This system provides for rigorous traceability and security, and achieves a high delete resource reuse rate(*1). By providing this safe and secure service, we are fully discharging our Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR).
(*1) Resource reuse rate
The ratio of the amount (by weight) of recycled parts and resources to the amount of end-of-life business IT products processed.
Fujitsu Recycling Centers throughout Japan
Achievements in Collection and Recycling End-of-Life IT Products
We recycled 8,276 tons of IT products from corporate customers in fiscal 2008, and achieved a resource reuse rate of 91.5%.
We collected more notebook computers and liquid crystal monitors from individual customers and recycled more of their materials, boosting the number of end-of-life PC units to 67,939.
Providing Product Recycling Information
To process end-of-life IT products appropriately, Fujitsu develops and operates an electronic disassembly manual management system that provides, using internal web sites, Fujitsu recycling centers with both the information necessary for product recycling and disassembly manuals in an animated format. In particular, this system provides information on chemical substances, plastic materials, and units that may retain customer data.
Promoting Recycling
Experienced workers carefully dismantle collected products by hand and separate the materials into categories such as steel, copper, aluminum, precious metals, glass and 20 different types of plastic. They also strive to raise their manual disassembly standards through the use of animated disassembly manuals. Materials recognition equipment has been introduced for plastics that are difficult to discriminate, so as to allow the complete segregation of different types of plastic.
In addition to minimizing the quantity of waste materials in this way, we are continually trying to turn them back into resources that can be reused to make products. To keep our customers informed of these initiatives, we distribute ballpoint pens made from recycled plastic at exhibitions and other events, as well as demonstrating PCs being manually dismantled.
Risk Manegement
Developing a Traceability System
We developed an integrated recycling information management system and have adopted it at the Fujitsu recycling centers. This system prevents theft and illegal dumping by attaching barcodes to customers' IT products and managing data on the history of the recycling process from acceptance at the recycling center through disassembly and destruction of the hard disks on a per-customer basis.
Operation of Security Systems
A high level of security is maintained at Fujitsu Recycling Centers by using infrared cameras to monitor automatically for intruders and check the storage status of the accepted products.
