Canon imageRUNNER 3245i Receives Five-Star Environmental Rating From Buyers Laboratory, Inc.

(Lake Success, NY) - Underscoring its commitment to the environment and helping organizations reduce their overall carbon footprint, Canon U.S.A., Inc., a leader in digital imaging and advanced office solutions, today announced the imageRUNNER 3245i has received a five-star rating – the highest possible – from Buyers Laboratory Inc. (BLI) in overall environmental performance.

Based on BLI's extensive real-world testing, the imageRUNNER 3245i uses less energy than the competition in all running and non-running modes. The device consumed less energy – less than half the average – than any other Segment Four monochrome copier tested to date. The imageRUNNER 3245i also has an annual projected energy cost that was just one-third of the average compared to competitor models.

BLI's extensive environmental performance evaluation also takes into consideration energy consumption as well as recovery times. While low energy consumption is a critical measurement tool in today's streamlined business environments, a device cannot be used to its fullest potential if it requires a long recovery time from sleep mode. Through BLI's testing, the Canon imageRUNNER 3245i showed faster than average recovery times from idle and sleep modes after sitting dormant overnight and is competitive in recovery time from sleep mode during daily use.

"Canon has a long-standing commitment to environmental preservation and reducing our overall carbon footprint, and receiving these outstanding ratings from BLI is a testament to our dedication," said Sam Yoshida, vice president and general manger, Imaging Systems Group, Canon U.S.A. "We are continuously researching new and advanced technologies that will not only help streamline and improve business environments, but also help companies in their push to become more 'green' and environmentally friendly."

Also of note, the Canon imageRUNNER 3245i received five-star ratings in Runnability using 30 percent, 50 percent and 100 percent Recycled Papers. Throughout the testing, not a single misfeed occurred in the combined 39,000 total impressions and there were no issues with device dusting or paper curling.

In addition to the outstanding BLI environmental ratings, the imageRUNNER 3245i is a ENERGY-STAR qualified and RoHS-compliant device which includes several environmentally conscious features such as toner-save mode when printing, job review to ensure first prints are accurate, and proof mode when copying.

Canon Inc. and its 103 subsidiaries, including North America, Europe, Asia and Australia – totaling more than 700 sites worldwide – are one of the world's largest ISO-14001 Certificate Holders under a consolidated certificate. To learn more about Canon's full line of ENERGY-STAR qualified and certified products and other environmental initiatives, please visit www.usa.canon.com.

About Canon U.S.A., Inc.
Canon U.S.A., Inc., is a leading provider of consumer, business-to-business, and industrial digital imaging solutions. Its parent company, Canon Inc. (NYSE:CAJ), a top patent holder of technology, ranked fourth overall in the U.S. in 2009†, with global revenues of US $35 billion, is listed as number four in the computer industry on Fortune Magazine's World's Most Admired Companies 2009 list, and is on the 2009 BusinessWeek list of "100 Best Global Brands." Canon U.S.A. is committed to the highest levels of customer satisfaction and loyalty, providing 100 percent U.S.-based consumer service and support for all of the products it distributes. At Canon, we care because caring is essential to living together in harmony. Founded upon a corporate philosophy of Kyosei – "all people, regardless of race, religion or culture, harmoniously living and working together into the future" – Canon U.S.A. supports a number of social, youth, educational and other programs, including environmental and recycling initiatives. Additional information about these programs can be found at www.usa.canon.com/kyosei. To keep apprised of the latest news from Canon U.S.A., sign up for the Company's RSS news feed by visiting www.usa.canon.com/rss.

About Davis Business Machines, Inc.
Davis Business Machines offers an integrated suite of imaging, document management, and workflow management software. Follow news, photos and video coming from Davis Business Machines by subscribing to our news feed by visiting http://www.dbm.net/articles?rss or on Twitter at www.twitter.com/dbmnet. To learn more about our products and services, visit us at http://www.dbm.net or call us at 1-800-287-9326.

8 Document Management Practices that are Cost Effective and Eco Friendly

As leading economic indicators continue to signal a global economic slowdown, companies are looking for effective steps to take – such as lowering costs and streamlining operations – in order to weather the storm and achieve a competitive edge in the eventual recovery. At the same time, recent industry research shows that businesses also want to be more environmentally responsible.

There are several document management practices that can help companies reach both their environmental and cost-reduction goals. From the sustainability perspective, these practices can significantly reduce the use of paper, thereby saving trees, gas in shipping the paper, physical space to store it, and halting the eventual destruction of many files that end up in a landfill. According to the Environmental Paper Network, “If, for example, the United States cut its office paper use by roughly 10 percent, or 540,000 tons, greenhouse gases would fall by 1.6 million tons. This is the equivalent of taking 280,000 cars off the road for a year.”

Here are eight guidelines highlighting document management practices in the office that can benefit the environment and reduce costs:

1. The workgroup alternative

To the extent possible, replacing personal desktop printers with workgroup MFPs (multifunction peripherals that combine print/copy/scan/fax functionality in one machine) shared by departments can have a strong positive impact. One financial services company replaced 1,100 copiers and printers and 1,000 fax machines with 400 MFPs. The initiative eliminated 1,700 machines that no longer consume resources based on their manufacture, transportation, operation, maintenance, and eventual disposal.

2. Adopt scanning practices

Instead of copying and storing physical documents, organizations can scan and store electronically. Employees can retain digital copies that they can distribute electronically, and at the same time avoid accumulating files filled with paper.

As a conservative estimate, scanning can reduce paper consumption by one to three percent. In a recent industry survey, senior executives involved in document management indicated that document scanning has a high impact across the greatest range of business goals that include reducing costs, increasing competitive advantage, enhancing regulatory compliance, and improving customer service.

3. Default to duplex

Most multi-page documents don’t require the text to be printed on one side of the page. Newspapers, magazines and books use both sides (duplex printing). With effective fleet management it is possible to change office practices and make duplex printing of multi-page documents the norm. This can potentially decrease paper use by up to 50 percent.

4. Eliminate printing banner pages

A banner page is the extra page that prints before an employee’s file prints with username and machine name information. Gartner’s research estimates that organizations can reduce their consumables cost by up to 20 percent by eliminating banner pages from office print jobs. Banner pages can represent up to a quarter of pages printed for some typical office print jobs. A 1,000 person organization could cut up 1.6 million pages and save $33,500 per year by eliminating banner page printing (“Cost Cutting Initiatives for Office Printing,” Sharon McNee and Ken Weilerstein, Feb. 2008.)

5. Bulk up

Buying paper and toner in bulk can reduce transportation, packaging, and storage resources. Buying in bulk also often results in cost savings.

6. Leverage “smart” technologies

Enterprises can use MFP “smart” technologies such as Personal Mail Box, Fax-from-Desktop, Scan-to-Email/File Folder, and Document Routing in order to decrease paper and chemicals used in printing. This can reduce paper usage by up to three percent.

7. Implement user authentication

With as many as one in 10 documents sent to the printer and uncollected or sent again before collection to correct user errors, enterprises could reduce ad hoc print costs by up to 10 percent by implementing a PIN authentication system.

8. Put more text on each page

Paper usage can be reduced by changing a few default settings that will result in more text on each page. For example, in MS Word, you can go to “File,” then to “Page Setup” and set the margins to accommodate more text. Compared to the normal settings, this could use up to 14 percent less paper. Additionally, when printing, you can reduce font size to 10 point to decrease the amount of paper required.

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Originally authored by Ken Neal, a Certified Enterprise Content Management Practitioner.