Epson has been a regular contributor at Japan's Eco-Products Exhibition for many years. Hosted by the Japan Environmental Management Association for Industry (JEMAI) and Nikkei Inc., the event is one of the largest environmental exhibitions in Japan and is used by Epson to demonstrate its latest environmental initiatives. This report focuses on Epson's efforts to explain these initiatives at Eco-Products Exhibition 2014 New window, held last December.
Booth overview
Now in its 16th year, Eco-Products has become established as Japan's largest environmental exhibition. Epson has participated since the very beginning, using the event to showcase its various initiatives to reduce its environmental footprint. Epson designed its booth to appeal to a wide range of visitors from businesspeople to students and small children. Our display taught visitors how we reduce environmental footprint, introduced them to our eco-conscious products and services, and gave them a sense of the possibilities for the future at Epson.
Stage presentation and guided tours
Following the theme "Epson Technology for People and Planet," the Epson booth featured historic products made with our compact, energy-saving, high-precision technologies that have been the DNA of our manufacturing innovation since our founding. A screen dropped down at the entrance to the display area to make a stage. An interactive projector played a presentation on the big screen about Epson's core technologies and how they contribute to lifestyle and business comfort and environmental solutions. At the end of the presentation, the screen lifted and the show shifted to a display corner. Having built up the sense of expectation among the visitors, staff conducted guided tours around the booth. Many tour participants commented that the guides' explanation was easy to comprehend and gave them a deeper understanding of Epson environmental initiatives.
Products and services reducing environmental footprint
Each booth corner introduced an initiative such as making Epson products and services smaller, lighter, or more energy efficient to help solve environmental problems. The "energy-saving/long-life" corner featured a printer with high-capacity ink packs. Equipped with a PrecisionCore micro TFP print head, this product features excellent durability along with low power consumption. The ink packs generate less waste than a laser printer requiring many consumables and parts that need regular replacement. The corner highlighted this product as a solution for vastly reducing environmental footprint. Many visitors were also eager to see our latest printers built to be smaller and lighter than equivalent earlier models. There was also plenty of interest in a display about our system for recovering and recycling used ink cartridges.
Calling attention to future environmental contributions
Another corner displayed the Moverio smart glasses. Here we showed how users can support work processes remotely and help logistics warehouses operate more efficiently with augmented reality (AR) and applications that take advantage of the ability to see through both lenses. The display impressed on visitors that the uses of smart glasses are sure to grow going forward. In ways like this, the Epson booth showed visitors that Epson's vision for new environmental contributions will be to suggest positive changes to our customers' work styles and make their lifestyles more comfortable. We will do this with products and services developed with a whole new perspective in the domains of printing, visual communications, quality of life improvement, and manufacturing innovation with Epson's core compact, energy-saving, high-precision technologies
About 1,200 people went on guided tours around the Epson booth, and more than 1,000 filled out a questionnaire. In addition to environmental staff, Epson members working in sales, planning, and design also provided useful information to visitors and got to hear the customers' points of view. We look forward to offering more opportunities for customers to learn about Epson's initiatives to reduce environmental footprint.
