Environmental Sustainability Management

Amid a global focus on global warming prevention, governments and international organizations around the world are stepping up their efforts. For instance, corresponding to the publication of the fourth Assessment Report by International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which showed ‘50% reduction of global GHG emission from the 2000 level’ as one of its scenarios, G8 Summit held in Heiligendamm, Germany cited it and advocated that this ambitious case should be a global target for the post-Kyoto framework.

Furthermore, several parties suggest stricter goals that the year of 1990 should be adopted as a base year, or that industrialized countries need to reduce their emissions by 30% in a mid-term 2020 target because of their bigger responsibility for historical emission. Regarding the peak-out year, some researchers advocate based on their scientific analysis that global GHG emissions must be peaked within ten to fifteen years from now, considering seriousness and urgency of climate change issues. Against this backdrop, the former Japanese Prime Minister, Yukio Hatoyama announced world’s highest and most ambitious GHG reduction target by 2020, which is 25% reduction compared to a 1990 level, at the U.N. Climate Change Conference on Sep.22, 2009.

Panasonic in general supports these directions from a point of view that drastic GHG emission reduction by innovative technological development must be achieved in a timely manner to tackle global warming and stabilize a GHG concentration. And we believe it is important to take into consideration cost effectiveness and difference of progress made in energy-efficiency initiatives as of today when allocating numerical reduction targets among each country/region, industry and individual company.

Pursuing to become the No.1 Green Innovation Company in the Electronics Industry as our vision, we’re furhter promoting environmental sustainability management. We are determined to contribute to a global climate change initiative by reducing its GHG emissions from all business activities and spreading energy-efficient products throughout the world as a public entity.

Vision and Strategy: Making the “environment” central to all of our business activities, Panasonic aims to become the No.1 Green Innovation Company in the Electronics Industry.

Environmental Action Plan: Panasonic will further enhance its activities by steadily implementing concrete themes and targets in environmental activities.

Environmental Impact of our Business Operations: The diagram maps the environmental impact throughout our business operations, from post material-procurement stage to recycling activities.

Environmental Governance: Aiming to contribute to the establishment of a sustainable society where economic growth goes with ecology, Panasonic is promoting environmental sustainability management based on the PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Action) cycle.

Environmental Management Systems: Panasonic strives to establish a management system fundamental for environmental management and identify accurate environmental data for all manufacturing business sites.

Environmental Risk Management: Report on information regarding our thorough activities to forecast, prevent, and manage potential environmental risks in corporate activities.

Environmental Accounting: Panasonic globally collects data on its environmental conservation costs and economic benefits in relation to generated (controlled) environmental impact, which are internally utilized as basic information for our environmental sustainability management.

History of Environmental Activities: Introduction of the history of Panasonic’s environmental activities along with movements in the world, as well as in Japan.