Ink and toner recycling specialist Croxley Recycling has signed an agreement with Ricoh New Zealand to collect and recycle all Ricoh e-waste nationwide.
David Lilburne, managing director at Croxley, says the e-waste agreement with Ricoh comes as Croxley Recycling prepares to relocate its recycling plant from the North Shore to Croxley’s new facility in West Auckland. He says, “The new premises offers significant growth opportunities in terms of process space and allow for increased capital spend. We have just purchased a new shredder, compactor and granulator. This will support our growth plans for 2016 onwards.”
Ricoh says the government will have to make e-waste a priority
E-waste includes discarded computers, office electronic equipment, mobile phones and other electronic devices. Charley Peace, sustainability and communications manager for Ricoh New Zealand, 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”.
Croxley Recycling, an arm of stationery supplier Croxley, has eight years operation under its belt, recycling imaging consumables, such as toner cartridges and completing full-scale printer dismantling and recycling. The company operates toner cartridge collection and recycling schemes with Ricoh, Canon, Brother, Konica Minolta and Sharp. Croxley Recycling developed New Zealand’s largest network of 14000 collection points including businesses, schools, universities, hospitals, government departments, banks, home users, retailers and is free to consumers. It accepts and processes cartridges from all brands. As the first operation in New Zealand to gain Environmental Choice accreditation for a process, it supports worldwide best practice recycling greater than 99 per cent of all materials processed through its consumables facility.
Through its schemes, Croxley Recycling diverts more than 400,000 cartridges, some 200 tonnes, of recyclable material including non-biodegradable plastics from the landfill every year. Lilburne says a significant part of recycling includes the security of waste product pathways and finding uses for recycled product, as part of the product’s overall life cycle. For example, it separates metal and circuit boards for recycling and it sends plastic to local manufacturers for incorporation 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.
Growing Croxley Recycling forms a 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 works with partners to increase school awareness of ink cartridge recycling and an easier pathway for parents to recycle via collection points at local schools.
Croxley recycling accreditation includes 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; ECNZ licence EC-56-14 End of life ITT Equipment Recycling; and Enviromark Diamond.
New Zealand’s largest stationery wholesaler, and a subsidiary of United States based Office Depot, Croxley has a history in New Zealand that stretches back almost a century, producing iconic brands such as Olympic, Warwick and Collins.
