Brother International Europe is celebrating 15 years since first joining forces with rainforest conservation charity Cool Earth, becoming their longest-serving commercial partner.
Since the partnership began in 2009, Brother has been supporting seven communities across the Amazon and New Guinea forest, protecting 32 million trees across 78,000 hectares, which store more than 50 million tonnes of carbon and are crucial in combatting climate change. As a result, this has enabled communities to flourish and helped Cool Earth protect some of the world’s most endangered plants and wildlife.
“We are proud to have worked with Cool Earth for such a long time,” said Hisashi Ota, managing director of Brother International Europe. “Our ‘At your side’ vision is always to provide our customers with exceptional products and service, whilst also doing what we can to limit our impact on the planet, and through Cool Earth we are able to support vital work being conducted across the globe.”
Some of the activities have included improving water, sanitation and hygiene access for more than 2,500 people in Papua New Guinea, and the launch of Cool Earth’s Rainforest Lab in Peru providing access to Wi-Fi, technology and mapping tools so communities can protect their territories from threats.
“We are immensely proud of the achievements we have made working with Brother Europe, which not only support the conservation of the rainforest but also provide social and economic impacts, ranging from sustaining livelihoods to providing income and food security for Indigenous communities,” said Matthew Owen, director of Cool Earth.
An initiative that supports this partnership is the return of used Brother ink and toner cartridges – one of Europe’s largest and most successful remanufacturing programmes. Customers are asked to return their used cartridges free of charge, and Brother remanufactures or recycles 100% of all cartridges sent back and has done since 2013, with nothing going to landfill.
“Without the added support of our customers, this partnership would not have been so successful, so we also want to extend a huge thank you to them,” said Hisashi. “To date, we have remanufactured over 40 million toner cartridges, saving 1,500 tonnes of plastic waste from ending up in landfill every year. An achievement we are all incredibly proud of.”
