In the course of our on-site assessment at the pilot SME Shanghai BOSHI on 7th April 2011 an interview was conducted with its General Manager in order to find out more about the company’s situation with regards to environmental and safety standards and its key challenges.

Which particular improvement measures on Eco-efficiency, OHS and CSR were implemented in your company since taking part in our last training workshop in April 2010?
Our company produces a variety of mini receipt printers. As an initial achievement on eco-efficiency we improved the design of our product’s power switch during the design phase, leading to a 10% decrease in power consumption without affecting product performance. In addition, we installed new air exhaust pipes and ventilators above our production line for a healthier and safer work environment. In the after sales phase, we initiated a free of charge replacement of product plastic cases for our key customers, consequently extending the product usage time and ensuring that the old covers are recycled in a proper way. In order to further improve our environmental performance, we also reduced energy consumption up to 70% by redesigning our product testing process.

Environment friendly measures that will be implemented in the future include for instance efficiency improvements for our lighting power switch: Currently, 100 fluorescent lamps in our production area share the same power switch. By improving the design of the switch, we expect to save up to 60% of power consumption caused by illumination.

How is eco-design taken into account in your company’s product development?
By using recyclable materials for product parts and packaging, we are taking eco-design issues into consideration when designing and developing new products. Specifically, we follow our Low Carbon Printer energy saving and environment protecting concept. The size of the printer should be small to save material and space and the product’s power consumption has to be optimized. In addition, we use plastic material as much as possible for the structure parts of printers in order to lower costs and product weight and improve the recyclability. We are also trying to minimize the size of the required printing paper to reduce the long term consumption of printing supplies. Moreover, we promote thermal printing technology which reduces noise and power consumption, and we want to make sure that all packaging materials for the printer are recyclable. By providing an “old for new” replacement service, we can further diminish the environmental impact of our products.

What kind of assistance would benefit the improvement of your environment / quality management and compliance with international standards?
We would like to have further guidance on designing an energy-saving power supply and we would appreciate practical assistance on storage aspects and antistatic technology especially for our electronic components. Furthermore, we have been unable to make headways into the EU market so far due to lack of compliance with certain regulations. We are hoping to visit some enterprises with best practices in these fields. Obtaining practical hands-on training would enable us to enhance our capabilities and improve our existing environment / quality management system and compliance with European standards.

Which results do you expect from our Assessment Programme, and would a more in-depth life cycle assessment be useful for your company?
In order to strengthen our confidence and capacity in complying with environment related regulations, we would like the experts to identify those aspects that we are already doing a good job at. This would also enable us to build up our customer’s trust in our company and its products. Possible shortcomings that might be pointed out through the assessment will effectively help us identify areas for improvement. We are keen to continuously improve our environmental performance in order to meet international requirements that are important for exporting our products to overseas markets. We believe that in this endeavor, an in-depth assessment of the entire lifecycle of our products will be valuable.