Brother’s recycling plant in Slovakia is celebrating 15 years since opening. It has also been awarded carbon neutral status, the second Brother recycling facility to achieve the accreditation.
The factory, built to meet the growing demand for toner recycling across Europe, is the largest of four Brother recycling facilities. Collectively they remanufacture over 2.6 million toners annually, reusing enough waste to fill three Olympic-sized swimming pools every year.
Dave Lawrence, Director of Brother Industries Slovakia, said: “We opened Brother Industries Slovakia in 2007 and our operation has grown year-on-year to support the volume of cartridges being returned by Brother customers and partners. To date we have remanufactured over 18 million cartridges in Slovakia which shows how committed our customers are about supporting the environment and that they believe in our vision of sustainability.”
Brother explained that the Slovak facility takes empty toner cartridges, assess them, replaces worn parts, and creates remanufactured cartridges that go through stringent checks to match the same quality as new. In doing so, 80% of the original material is reused, with the remainder being recycled and used to make other Brother products.
This anniversary also comes as the facility has been confirmed as carbon neutral. Alongside Brother’s UK facility (which obtained carbon neutral status in 2021), they operate one of the only zero-waste-to-landfill, carbon neutral remanufacturing processes in Europe.
Dave Lawrence added: “Achieving carbon neutral status for such a large operation is significant and something that we are all incredibly proud of. We take our environmental responsibilities very seriously, and already undertake many initiatives to reduce our environmental impact. Anything we cannot directly re-use is recycled, contributing to a closed loop process where nothing goes to landfill.
“On top of that, much of the energy we need to operate is generated from solar panels and a ground heat pump we have installed. This natural source of energy has reduced our CO2 emissions by 48% alone. It is innovations like this that ensure we continually improve and challenge ourselves to run the most sustainable remanufacturing process possible.”
