Canon realizes that from the viewpoint of the entire product lifecycle, the raw materials / parts manufacturing and product usage stages are significant contributors to the environmental impact. We also understand that society requires immediately addressing environmental issues such as global climate change, resource utilization of end-of-life products, and proactive prevention of pollution due to disposal of these products in order to support a sustainable society.
In this context, Canon is accelerating its efforts to develop environmentally conscious products under a strategy that emphasizes energy efficiency, resource conservation and chemical substance control in consideration of the entire product lifecycle.
Additionally, Canon actively provides information about our environmentally conscious products that reflect the above-mentioned activities.
Canon has built a product environmental information system from product-related data spanning all stages of development: product planning, development and design, prototype creation, quality assurance, and manufacturing. Available on the Canon intranet, this system allows all development, planning, procurement, and manufacturing divisions to share product environmental data and to use this data to develop environmentally conscious products.
Development and design divisions have introduced 3D CAD systems, support tools using digital data to evaluate functions such as ease of assembly and disassembly, usability, safety and drive mechanisms, and digital mock-up reviews (DMRs). These systems effectively reduce the number of prototypes needed. Along with these support tools, we have developed environmental impact assessment software that can be applied from the early development and planning stages to evaluate compliance with regulations like the WEEE and RoHS Directive, application of various eco-labels, life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle cost (LCC) assessment and product assessment.
