David Finn: Time for a change

E-waste surveys, the first in 2002 and most recently in 2006. In both surveys it was obvious people are environmentally responsible in the home, but when it comes to the office environment they are confused about what to do and often feel exasperated and give up.

It shouldn’t be so — we’ve made some very simple changes at Kyocera as well as some more sophisticated ones. Simply separating our waste into three bins, recyclables, paper and general waste saved us 27 percent on our waste disposal costs. Movement sensors on our lighting, so it switches off when you leave the room, slashed our electricity costs. Banning screen savers is another good one. Our head office in Japan has solar panels on the roof and now puts electricity back into the grid. We’ve been associated with Clean Up Australia for more than six years and our staff has shown incredible commitment in cleaning up local Brush Farm Park — it was polluted with cars, scrap metal, toxic waste and weeds. It took us five years, but through an annual Business Clean Up Day event, we’ve restored it to a pristine state, so all the native
wildlife has returned.

Adding reseller value
Resellers who are pro-active, can add value and can re-invent themselves are the ones who will survive and thrive. The marketplace offers a great opportunity today as consumers are savvy and deeply concerned about the environment. Visionaries such as Al Gore and Rupert Murdoch who have the foresight to give the environment the benefit of the doubt and the courage to make brave decisions (Murdoch has just announced he’ll take Newscorp Corp businesses worldwide to be carbon neutral by 2010) are raising awareness of the environment to the masses. This is rocking consumers’ beliefs and changing their buying behaviour drastically.

We’re only just seeing the beginning of this shift and the businesses which can harness this and offer consumers what they want will thrive. But you have to be very careful about ‘Green washing’ here as there are a lot of companies doing that right now. Consumers are smarter than this and they’ll see through it.

It’s an exciting time for resellers because a couple of years ago it was a harder sell in many ways, a proliferation of brands and tight margins. Today a customer understands that orphan brands may offer a cheap quick fix, but there are bigger costs down the track both for the consumer and the environment. That product is unlikely to be robust and of good quality, it may not have readily available parts, service and support and more than likely questionable manufacturing methods let alone the manufacturer taking charge of the responsible disposal of the product at the end of its life.

Now more than ever, customers understand the benefit of paying a premium for quality products. It makes it a much easier sell for the reseller as not only can they show the cost savings of buying a Kyocera printer for instance, but the end-user now understands the value attached to a product which creates less waste, uses responsible packaging and is broken down and re-used at the end of its life.

I presented to a group of corporates at a recent seminar and used the example of Kyocera toner container taking 30 years to degrade, with no residual toxic chemicals, while other toner cartridges take 900 years to degrade and leave a toxic residue of carcinogenic material. One of them approached me later and said that alone was reason for her to spearhead a project to replace all their current printers with Kyocera. I can’t tell you how encouraging it is to get that sort of a response from a customer. I’ve been in this business a long time and I’d certainly call this a major mind-shift in customer attitudes and buying behaviour.

David Finn has spent the past 10 years heading up Kyocera Mita Australia. He sees right now as a time of great change within the industry and a time offering great opportunities for resellers.

“Customers understand the benefit of paying for a premium product.”

environment hardware industry kyocera printing