Hey, camera makers! Don’t lie to us anymore.
Our photographers are environmentally conscious. However, camera and equipment manufacturers are failing us. Most just protect their profits while causing significant damage to the environment.
So, how eco-friendly is your camera manufacturer? How much CO2 do they produce? Do they use mostly recycled materials? Are their products recyclable? Do you know? If you can’t find this information without difficulty, if it’s not marked up in an easy-to-understand format, and if they’re making a big splash on small projects, then they’ve committed the crime of scouring.
Let’s start with good things by celebrating Urth . filter and accessory company, formerly known as Gobe. They produce exceptional filters at a more affordable price than many of their competitors. More significantly, they offset their carbon footprint by actively planting trees in tropical forests. Every time we buy a filter from them, they plant five plants. Their website has clear information on what they are doing now and where they are working to improve.
As we explored options for offsetting our impact, we quickly realized planting trees was the best way to do it because trees absorb carbon, clean water, and rejuvenate ecosystems. We sponsor tree planting projects run by the Eden Reforestation Project – our tree planting partner – to plant five trees with each Urth product and provide jobs to those affected by the disaster. Deforest.
So far, they have planted more than 5 million trees, offsetting more than 1.6 million tons of CO2. Their ambitious goal is to reach one billion trees by 2032. They are also committed to using low-impact materials. The longevity of the products due to their quality keeps them from getting buried. All their packaging is also recyclable. It is obvious that they are honest and open about their products. They provide easy-to-find, accurate, easy-to-understand data about the impact of their products and what they do to address it.
As a result, the business thrives.
Sadly, most other photography companies aren’t as open, hiding what they do by wiping green. These companies do one of two things. They either create documents that are huge, inaccessible, impressive to look at, boring to read, but with little content, or they don’t publish data at all.
Let’s take Canon as an example. They provide a large amount of material that requires a person with a lot of time on hand and a considerable understanding of environmental data to find relevant information. You have to search difficult to report, but when you find it and scroll through page 47 out of 133, it says that in 2020 their raw material production has generated an estimated 3,147,000 tons of CO2. The development, production and sales generated an additional 940,100 tons. Shipping their products to their sales outlets and other stores, 304,000 tons. This figure is just under 4.4 million tons of CO2. That was before an increase of 2.264 million tons due to the use of their products. They say their total lifecycle CO2 is higher than that, at 7.72 million tonnes.
To put this into context, the average American produces 19.8 tons of CO2 per year.
Furthermore, their manufacturing process releases 0.8 tons of sulfur oxides, which can be dissolved in water to form sulfuric acid. 47.9 tons of nitrogen oxide, which can be dissolved to form nitric acid. They also released 372 tons of controlled chemicals, as well as 6.755 million cubic meters of wastewater.
In the bold header line of the diagram is the word “Recycling”. They used 1,248 tons of reusable parts and 2,303 tons of recycled materials. So great! However, this is a drop in the ocean compared to 616,000 tons of new resources used to produce their goods.
They claim they have good news, and they make noise about how their CO2 production has dropped dramatically over the years. But it’s still huge, and that drop seems surprisingly slow.
They also talked about their Bird Branch project, which involves “bird-centered activities.” That includes surveying migratory birds, adding nesting boxes to their locations, cleaning nests, and encouraging people to photograph the birds. Does this sound like a significant contribution to the environment? For me, it doesn’t.
Compared to some of the other big businesses, Canon is doing better, but when you compare it to the efforts of the relatively small company, Urth, they don’t sound very impressive, do they?
It should also be noted that they also provide humanitarian assistance worth 8 million yen ($62,462) as part of a total social contribution of 2.2 billion yen ($17 million). That may sound remarkable, but with net sales of 5.51 trillion yen ($30.55 billion), it accounts for about 1/1800 of that. Meh!
Sony’s Road to Zero website features impressive infographics about curbing climate change, promoting biodiversity, controlling chemicals, and conserving resources. But the site has no real content. “Their aim is to provide environmentally conscious products” and “minimize consumption and maximize recycled materials,” or their claim to “set standards for chemical management our own” and saying “we are aware that our activities may affect the natural environment in a variety of ways” are all vague statements commonly used in greenwashing .
Their global environmental plan says Sony is “striving to achieve an environmental footprint of zero” over the life of its products and businesses by 2050. However, this is only one goals, not a measure of success.
You have to tap on the little hamburger menu to find their data and performance results. Even then, they are only displayed as a percentage. Their marked 5% drop in power consumption doesn’t reveal that they are, in fact, still using a whopping 25,000 terajoules (25,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 joules.)
Digging deeper into Sony’s corporate website, you can download a PDF document that reveals their true environmental impact. On pages 131 and 132 of a 199-page document, you can discover that in 2020 alone, their sites generated more than 1.2 million tons of CO2. But another 17 million tons are produced from other factors such as goods and services purchased, transported and distributed, waste, employment, and largely the use of products sold by consumers. they took 11,403,000 tons. Note that Sony doesn’t use tons of metrics, so the numbers appear smaller.
They also generate 15.45 million cubic meters of wastewater. However, they have a remarkable success: of the other 51,000 tons of waste, they recycle all but 1,000 tons of trash.
Like Canon, Sony is getting better, but are they doing it fast enough? To me, it looks like they don’t.
Nikon is also setting a target of zero carbon emissions by 2050. Exceeded its 18.2% reduction target from 2014 to 2021, achieving a reduction of 25.9%, still averaging just 3.7% per year. Also, as we saw earlier, a whopping 25.9% drop still leaves a huge number.
They also hide their actual CO2 production figures on page 47 of their sustainability report: 182,625 tons. The plant also discharged 3,297 cubic meters of wastewater, 27 tons of Dichloropentafluropropane (depletion of stratospheric ozone layer, global warming and health effects), 10 tons of toluene (harmful to plant membranes, toxic to plants). with marine life, harmful to human health), and the like.
Nikon highlighted their participation in Earth Hour. That’s just one hour out of 8,760 hours per year.
Of course, these are just the three biggest companies, and I’m sure most other businesses are performing similarly underperforming and masking their results in similar ways. Furthermore, the problem will not be limited to the photography industry, but most manufacturers in most industries. Indeed, Canon, Sony, and Nikon all make more than just cameras.
So, let’s start putting pressure on manufacturers, all of them, to shrink their operations and let them come up with these ten reasons to buy from them.
1. Publish and highlight clear and understandable environmental data that can be easily accessed and understood by your consumers.
2. Take ownership of your flaws and fix them quickly.
3. Show your commitment by setting ambitious annual goals for cutting CO2 to zero by 2050.
4. Stop fooling us with your data rotation and clean up your performance.
5. Offset all of your current CO2 production and more by planting trees in deforested areas and, like Urth, join our global network 1% for Planet.
6. Switch to renewable energy at all manufacturing plants.
7. Change your manufacturing process to reduce toxic and environmentally harmful chemicals and prevent them from entering the environment.
8. Make your products recyclable and use recycled materials in their production.
9. Encourage and help your customers do the same.
10. Reduce your waste water.
In the meantime, let’s let the photographers embarrass these big, rich corporations by shouting about the petty actions they take. We should also encourage them to do much better using the power of our wallet. When possible, buy better products for the planet.
