Our business promotes economic savings, sustainability, environmental protection and skilled employment generation.
Our Andalusian company located in the municipality of Seville, pioneered in Spain seven years ago by offering printing services with remanufactured equipment and consumables to large private accounts and the Public Administration. This new form of business promotes economic savings, sustainability, environmental protection and skilled employment generation.
Our “Eco Print Solutions” project has been successfully implemented in both local and regional companies as in the rest of the national territory, they have committed to saving and implementing sustainable solutions in their businesses and thus promoting the Circular Economy.
Fortunately, other Andalusian and national companies in the sector, including some of the manufacturers such as RICOH, CANON or KONICA MINOLTA, are also committed to offering such remanufactured equipment to their customers, thus ensuring that there is more turnout in tenders and, therefore, more savings for the customer.
GM Technology has been demonstrating over the past seven years that the “Circular Economy” generates an average saving of 40% for the Public Administration through contracts awarded through public bidding, and with which the same service has been covered with identical guarantees as brand new equipment.
Since this year, the European Union has joined this market philosophy and is also committed to implementing in Public Bodies, the use of remanufactured and sustainable equipment and consumables to preserve environmental impact. Therefore, from now on the contracts must be directed in this regard.
The European Union requires printer and copier manufacturers to design cartridges to ensure compatibility taking into account its environmental impact (eco-design) in mind and provide end-of-life return services.
To this end, the European Commission together with ETIRA (the European Association of Toner and Inkjet Remanufactured Products) approved in July 2020 a set of measures for the procurement of office supplies through public biddings, where it is expressly recommended NOT to buy new manufactured cartridges in Asian SE OEMs, as OEM patents are often infringed, cannot be remanufactured, thus polluting the environment. (See here)
As a general rule, compatible print cartridges manufactured in Asia contain dangerous substances in their manufacture, which makes it impossible to remanufacture them and to regain a second useful life. For this reason, they are discarded and end up in landfills in Europe.
ETIRA invites public bodies to use the guide, which is currently voluntary, when requesting offers for imaging equipment and consumables through public biddings.
The key findings of the new policy are outlined below, with the full criteria available here.
• Printers must comply with EU regulations on REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals) WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive) and other regular EU laws and regulations.
- Printers must meet emission, noise, energy consumption standards and not contain hazardous substances beyond the limits.
- They must offer warranties and allow the use of remanufactured cartridges and any firmware update must not interfere with the use of reused or remanufactured supplies.
- Return programs are also requested, and there are criteria for supplies supplied under a managed print contract. Cartridges must meet page yield standards and must not be designed to limit the ability to reuse or remanufacture them.
The CPE criteria also encourage an initial “fleet assessment” to determine which machines need to be replaced and, more importantly, which can be retained, which will provide greater opportunities to reuse both cartridges and machines.
We encourage you to “Join the circular economy crew.”
From GM Technology “We recover technology to create a more sustainable future”
