Sustainable manufacturing

Nowadays, companies treat sustainability as a crucial objective in their strategy and operations in order to increase growth and competitiveness. The sustainability mega-trend has engaged all kinds of companies into sustainable efforts. It is fair to state that companies have gained many positive effects of applying sustainable manufacturing such as efficiency, cost and waste reduction, and an increased competitive advantage. A strong brand and reputation builds trust, not forgetting that increased requirements are present all the time.  Sustainability is a way to compete today, not tomorrow. Tomorrow will be too late.

Cajo addresses global sustainability challenges by promoting the goal to reduce the use of chemicals, as well as reducing material waste and energy consumption. For instance, energy efficiency has been a priority in the EU. The Europe 2020 Energy Strategy and Waste Framework Directive (Article 4) set the goal of a 20% improvement in energy efficiency within the EU. Also reducing the amount of waste generated at source and reducing hazardous content of that waste is regarded as the highest priority according to the Waste Hierarchy established in the Waste Framework Directive (Article 4). Cajo´s technology is a step forward in achieving both of these environmentally high goals.

Environmentally friendly marking systems are a major trend supported by both push (regulations) and pull (user demand) factors. The sustainability mega-trend is important, and manufacturers are becoming risk-averse in ever-growing regulation standards driven by the Paris Agreement envisioned to increase the cost of polluting.

This is a very unresearched topic so far. In 2019 a study was conducted with Macon Oy regarding the carbon footprint of laser labelling. Below you’ll find a short conclusion on the carbon footprint of laser printer versus inkjets. You can download the full study from the link below.

The study was carried out aiming to define the carbon footprint of industrial labelling with two alternative methods: 1. Cajo Technologies laser labelling and 2. ink labelling. The calculation included the emission of energy and chemicals, assuming an annual workload of 1697 hours. The carbon footprints of the labelling options are 43 kg CO2 eq per annum for Cajo and 501 kg CO2 eq per annum for inkjet. This result indicates that  Cajo`s chemical-free technology enables over 90% reduction of carbon footprint of industrial labelling.