Initiatives for Resources Recycling

With swift economic growth advancing worldwide, bringing heightened attention to concerns over resources, the sourcing of new resources and materials will not only impact our global environment, but minerals resource depletion and materials pricing run-up will also become big issues that impact company management.

To address these concerns, Panasonic selected resources recycling as an underlying theme along with CO₂ emissions reduction, promoting our “recycling-oriented manufacturing” concept. Under this concept, we minimize the amount of total resources used and maximize the amount of recycled materials, as well as aim toward Zero Waste Emissions by reducing our final disposal of waste from production activities. We continuously look to make our products lighter and smaller to reduce our total resources used, and we employ new technologies that maximize the collection of recycled resources and expand the use of recycled resources. We also look to eliminate the waste generated at our factories by promoting the use of recycled resources, and we aim to reduce the waste we send to landfills to as close to zero. We will contribute to creating a more sustainable society, as well as achieve business growth by globalizing total materials recycling. Our total recycling system addresses the resources we work with during development, production, and logistics, as well as the resources we receive from used product collection.

We use many kinds of resources due to our wide range of products and businesses, from semiconductor parts to houses. In recycling-oriented manufacturing, it is important to promote the reduction of total resources used, and at the same time to develop a recycling process according to the specific characteristics of each resource for expansion of our usage of recycled resources.

We review the volume of each type of resource used across our Panasonic Group and continuously clarify recycled resource utilization issues. For example, in the case of plastic, by identifying the characteristics of each product that require this resource, securing a stable supply, and researching how to recycle it and develop new recycling technologies for it, we used approx. 6,000 tons of recycled plastic for our products in fiscal 2011. As for wood, we position those that are certified as Category 1 (see page 26) in the Panasonic Group Green Procurement Guidelines for wood as recycled resources and promote the utilization. In fiscal 2011, we used a total of about 165,000 tons of recycled wood.

In addition, for other resources as well, we are enhancing the foundation for our recycling-oriented manufacturing by clarifying the issues and challenges relating to the utilization of recycled resources, accumulating the know-how for making the best of the resources, and preparing guidelines.

Our recycling-oriented manufacturing focuses not only on recovering and renewing materials and resources, but also promoting the use of recycled materials in our products to go one step further.

As the goal for recycling resources, we have set the percentage of recycled resources used in total resources used to more than 12% in our midterm management plan GT12, based on the vision that it is important to take comprehensive actions without limiting resource types. In fiscal 2011, a significant extension of initiatives for wood lead to a great boost in the usage of recycled resources corporate wide, and resulted in achieving 13.6%. Fiscal 2011 also achieved a 97.4% recycling rate of waste at factories.