Collaboration with Suppliers

Panasonic cannot make a sufficient contribution to the environment by itself. To increase our contributions, we are fostering cooperation with our suppliers and transportation partners, who have close relations with our business operations, beyond corporate boundaries. We are thereby reducing our environmental impacts across the supply chain in a range of aspects, such as CO₂ emissions reduction, resource recycling, management of chemical substances, and biodiversity conservation.

Aiming for manufacturing environmentally-conscious products in partnership with our suppliers, we released our first Green Procurement Standards (Version 5 issued in February 2010) in March 1999, and promote Green Procurement. We request all our suppliers to establish, maintain, and improve their environmental management systems and the environmental performance of the materials by acquiring ISO 14001 certification, as well as to respect our environmental policies and principles, based on our Green Procurement Standards.

For the management of chemical substances, we ask suppliers to submit documents that certify the non-use of specific chemical substances based on the Panasonic Group Chemical Substances Management Rank Guidelines and to enter data on the use of chemical substances into Panasonic’s GP-Web chemical substance management system. We also conduct audits in cooperation with suppliers.

As for the reduction of CO₂ emissions, we asked suppliers belonging to Panasonic Kyoeikai^*1 to identify and reduce their CO₂ emissions. In response, about 100 suppliers began conducting the necessary activities in fiscal 2009, and although overall emissions increased in fiscal 2011 year on year due to the extremely hot summer and the special boom caused by the Eco Point System implemented in Japan, the CO₂ emissions of suppliers had decreased by about 11% compared with the emissions prior to the launch of the project. In the future we will identify total CO₂ emissions from the entire supply chain. As the first step, we will cooperate with suppliers and materials manufacturers who have large volumes of emissions and identify the amount of CO₂ they have emitted in order to supply products to Panasonic.

• *1 Panasonic Kyoeikai is composed of excellent small and medium-size enterprises supporting the Panasonic Group’s production activities.