Relationship between Business Activities and Environment
Minimizing environmental impacts and maximizing environmentally conscious activities
On one hand, we try to minimize absorptions of raw materials and energy from global resources, along with eliminating emissions of pollutants into a global environment. On the other hand, we try to maximize environmentally conscious activities including recycling and creating environmentally conscious products, while making efforts to grasp direct and indirect environmental impacts through the entire business activities.
TOSHIBA TEC Group's commitment to environmental protection
The TOSHIBA TEC Group works toward reducing global environmental impacts through various activities, such as the development of environmentally conscious products,activities to prevent global warming, enhancement control on chemical substances, effective use of resources and recycling of used products.
We carry out environmental education, environmental accounting and environmental audits as the foundation,which support aforementioned activities, as well as work toward disclosing environmental information. Through these activities, we contribute to promoting the establishment of a sustainable society.
Minimizing environmental impacts
It is inevitable to extract raw materials and energy from global resources and consume them in order to manufacture products. As a result, pollutants such as CO2 (carbon dioxide), chemical substances and waste are emitted and absorbed into a global environment. CO2 and NOx (nitrogen oxides) are also emitted during products procurement and transportation through the usage of fuel for vehicles. Customers also indirectly generate CO2 as electricity consumption, while using products. The TOSHIBA TEC Group advances to minimize these environmental impacts.
Maximizing environmentally conscious activities
We make further efforts to maximize environmentally conscious activities such as the development and distribution of environmentally conscious products,recycling of wastes and used products, green procurement and purchase.
Environmental impacts in fiscal 2003
The business activities of the TOSHIBA TEC Group are as follows:
1) procure raw materials and components
2) process and assemble raw materials and components to build products
3) transport finished products to distributors
4) have customers use the products
5) collect used products where possible for reuse and recycling
The following figure shows environmental impacts in each phase of a product life cycle:
Direct environmental impacts in the production phase contain the following amounts:
• 13,000 tons of CO2 emitted from plants due toconsumption of all energies
• 5,000 tons of CO2 emitted from offices due toconsumption of all energies
• 6.8 tons of chemical substances discharged into the atmosphere and water (PRTR* target substances)
• Finally 37 tons of waste to be landfilled
Indirect environmental impacts indicate 32,000 tons of CO2 emitted in the product usage phase, and the amount is approximately 2.5 times that in the production phase.
Therefore, it is important to take energy-saving measures on products.
* PRTR (Pollutant Release and Transfer Register): Companies disclose the amounts of chemical substance releases and transfers by reporting to the administrative organization.
