Today, Ricoh Americas Corporation attended the White House Summit on Climate and the Road through Paris. The Summit gathered leaders from the government, private sector, academic, technical and scientific communities to focus on cross-sector efforts to tackle the climate change challenge here in the United States as well as on a global scale. Specifically, the event focused on how to further efforts around carbon mitigation, sustainability, and resiliency, as well as how technologies are emerging to support and scale these efforts. Additionally, participants discussed how to further engage and organize in support of the upcoming COP21 Paris climate negotiations.
At the event, Ricoh announced that it has joined the American Business Act on Climate Pledge, joining more than 60 companies from across the American economy that are standing with the Obama Administration to demonstrate an ongoing commitment to climate action and to voice support for a strong outcome to the COP21 Paris climate negotiations.
THE AMERICAN BUSINESS ACT ON CLIMATE PLEDGE:
We applaud the growing number of countries that have already set ambitious targets for climate action. In this context, we support the conclusion of a climate change agreement in Paris that takes a strong step forward toward a low-carbon, sustainable future.
We recognize that delaying action on climate change will be costly in economic and human terms, while accelerating the transition to a low-carbon economy will produce multiple benefits with regard to sustainable economic growth, public health, resilience to natural disasters, and the health of the global environment.
We put forth our pledges as follows:
Reduce greenhouse gas emissions
Advanced nations need to reduce their environmental impact to one-eighth the fiscal 2000 levels by 2050. Based on this, the Ricoh Group has established mid- and long-term environmental impact reduction goals for three key areas: energy conservation, resource conservation, and pollution prevention. Ricoh sets the target to reduce the company's total lifecycle of CO2 emissions by 30% by 2020 and by 87.5% by 2050 from the 2000 level.
As part of Ricoh's commitment, we have continuously improved the energy efficiency of our products. As a result, the average energy consumption of our ENERGY STAR certified color Multifunctional Printers has decreased more than 70% over the last 7 years.
In addition, we will install a solar farm system at our ENERGY STAR certified corporate facility in New Jersey by 2016 in order to partially offset its energy expenditure.
Resource Conservation and Recycling
Ricoh's goal is to reduce the new input of resources by 25% by 2020 and by 87.5% by 2050 from the 2007 level. To reach that goal, we utilize materials in the most effective way possible. We are making our products smaller and lighter, employing parts with longer lifecycles, recycling and reusing parts and products, and expanding the use of renewable resources.