KYOCERA PRINT GREEN celebrates its anniversary

For five years, KYOCERA Document Solutions Germany has been offsetting its toner with the support of the myclimate climate protection project “Savings associations make efficient cooking stoves available to women in Kenya”. The Japanese document management provider’s toner has been climate-neutral for five years. To achieve this, all CO₂ emissions resulting from raw material extraction, production, transport, packaging and utilisation of the toner are offset.

l to r Stefan Baumeister, myclimate CEO; Daniela Matysiak, CSR Management Specialist; Stefan Mauer, Head of Marketing (both KYOCERA)

One gram of CO₂ is generated when a DIN-A4 page is printed. The volume of printing and copying in many companies offers huge potential to relieve the burden on the environment and improve your own carbon footprint. This is where KYOCERA PRINT GREEN comes in. “The fact that we are making an ongoing contribution to improving people’s living conditions with our engagement and our climate-neutral toner not only pleases us as a company, but also our customers and partners,” says Daniela Matysiak, the CSR Management Specialist who has supervised the KYOCERA PRINT GREEN project from the start. “Together we have already achieved a great deal and would like to say thank you for the successes of the last five years.”
 
Thanks to the climate-neutral toner, over 120,000 tonnes of CO₂ have been offset since 2013. To put this abstract figure into perspective, that is equivalent to the CO₂ emissions of one car circumnavigating the earth 11,000 times. Families with approximately 260,000 members combined are benefiting from over 50,000 efficient cookers. 166 permanent jobs, mostly for women, have since been created by local production/sales/financing.

Traditionally the rural communities of the Siaya region of western Kenya have cooked on open fires, which require huge amounts of firewood. Thanks to communal savings and loans associations, however, women can now afford more efficient stoves. This reduces the demand for firewood and thus protects the local forests, which leads to reduced CO₂ emissions. Savings associations also strengthen the women’s financial and social independence.

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