Imaging equipment and its consumables. Preparatory Study for Ecodesign

The Commission has decided to work on mandatory regulatory measures under Ecodesign Directive for imaging equipment and its consumables. This Preparatory Study is the first step towards the implementation of such measures. In this document, the current status of the imaging equipment market, user behaviour and technology aspects of this sector have been evaluated. Issues with environmental relevance have been identified as part of this research. For instance, devices seem to operate under short replacement cycles, despite the willing of consumers of prolonging their lifetime. Prevalent business models and high cost of repair partially explain this short lifetime of printers. Regarding cartridges, the main environmental issues are related to low reuse rates, usually caused by technical barriers introduced during the design phase. Other areas where cartridge environmental performance can improve are related to the optimisation their capacity or on the design of more material efficient configurations. Environmental and economic assessments of typical products have been carried out. Design options with the potential to reduce the environmental impact have been identified and evaluated.Then, ecodesign measures have been proposed. Improvements can be achieved in greenhouse gas emissions and consumer expenditure with measures aimed at increasing printer lifetime, shifting from integrated to single-part cartridge configurations or tackling the barriers against cartridge reuse.