Fuji Xerox opens green facility: photos

Fuji Xerox told ZDNet Australia that this front wall and the side walls are heritage listed, and cannot be changed. The building itself, however, is dramatically different on the inside to how it was in the 1930s when it was built.

The funky, colourful reception area: Fuji Xerox has made sure that everything down to the carpets and desks are made out of recycled materials in order to promote the facility's green image. The building is managed by an intelligent system that sips power and even uses carbon dioxide detectors to sense how many people are around. It subsequently compensates with the building's air conditioning system to pump fresh, conditioned air into the rooms with people in them.

Fuji Xerox looks to reclaim as much from its own products as possible at the facility. It tears down its ink and toner cartridges to clean, re-purpose, re-machine and reuse as many as possible.

Very little is wasted or thrown away in the new Fuji Xerox facility. When workers clean out toner cartridges, an extraction system pulls it out of the room they are working in, and puts it into barrels. These barrels are then sent to Victoria, where they are used in concrete kilns.

Fuji Xerox said that it always looks for new ways to reuse its waste. Last year, this leftover toner went to stone companies for use in road base.

The facility handles everything from the construction of machines through to quality control, where machines are put through their paces in a lab, right through to shipping.

Fuji Xerox technicians analyse everything in the products to see how they can be improved upon, and to pass their learning back to the company's head engineers and designers.

Senator Don Farrell and Fuji Xerox Australia and New Zealand managing director, Nick Kugenthiran, cut the green ribbon to officially open the centre.