Vision and Strategy

Panasonic will work with various partners to pursue and expand ‘better life’ for our customers.

• Vision

Green Plan 2018, set to realize our vision and Green Indexes, is Panasonic’s environmental action plan that outlines initiatives for all Panasonic Group employees to carry out. Following our previous action plan, the Green Plan 2010, which was established in 2001 our new Green Plan 2018 provides a clear action plan to take, our company forward from fiscal 2011 through fiscal 2019. Our action plan consists of a set of goals and targets including the four core items from our Green Indexes, as well as goals for other environmental challenges such as water conservation, management of chemical substances, and biodiversity conservation. Panasonic employees are committed to the Green Plan 2018 and we will continue to work together with everyone in society to address shared global environmental issues.

In the total CO₂ emissions from our business activities, CO₂ emissions from the actual use of our products by customers account for a large proportion. We will cut CO₂ emissions by setting targets to reduce the amount of CO₂ emitted from the use of our products in people’s daily lives, in addition to endeavoring to reduce emissions from our production activities across the world. Specifically, we will deliver comprehensive energy solutions that focus on proposing equipment for creating/storing energy and energy management systems. We aim for net CO₂ emissions from our business activities to reach a peak in fiscal 2019 and decline thereafter by providing more advanced products and systems towards the global minimization of CO₂ emissions.

Since fiscal 2011 we have also been enhancing measures to deal with the depletion of resources. We are committed to decreasing the amount of resources used and increasing recycled resources as our basic policy, and are pursuing Recycling-oriented Manufacturing from the procurement of materials and through the design, manufacture, and transportation of products. As for the recycling of waste from factories, which we have been promoting by setting specific targets, we will further enhance activities outside Japan while continuing the activities we started in fiscal 2011 to further increase the percentage of recycled resources within the total resources used. As one of our activities, in February 2012 we launched the Resources Recycling-oriented Products series that incorporate recycled resources.

Water will increase its importance as an environmental issue. In response, we will globally foster the recycling of water within our factories, in addition to continuing to reduce the use of water. We will also develop more products that will contribute to water saving and recycling.

As for the management of chemical substances, we have been implementing measures based on an initiative to target all countries, including those where the use of chemical substances is not regulated by law. For example, for the RoHS Directive enforced in Europe, we have met the criteria earlier than the legally provided term, and not only in Europe but on a global scale. Towards 2018 we will of course identify all the chemical substances used in our products and at our factories, assess their environmental impacts, and voluntarily reduce or discontinue the use of chemical substances with significant environmental impact.

Although we have been addressing biodiversity in our social contribution activities, we will begin implementing measures to conserve biodiversity in our business activities towards 2018, focusing on the following three fields: products, land use, and procurement.

With regard to our No.1 eco-conscious products, we have been globally fostering development activities to increase No.1 eco-conscious models. However, for CO₂ emissions reduction, it is essential that these products are actually used by customers. We will foster the development of No.1 eco-conscious products using more strict criteria while promoting the sales of these products in every category. We aim to double the sales share of these products in our total sales by fiscal 2019, compared to the fiscal 2010 level.

These targets cannot be achieved by Panasonic alone. We will ask for the understanding of all our partner companies and build closer relations with them to accelerate our contributions to the environment.

For these environmental initiatives to bring about great innovations, we need to have active communication, where we put forth various ideas one after the other and receive frank opinions from all the stakeholders involved. Panasonic calls such relations “‘eco ideas’ Relations (eR),” and it will conduct a range of initiatives to communicate more with its stakeholders through various opportunities.

• *1 Affected by restructuring of the TV business that has major influence on CO₂ reduction per unit, the FY2013 target in CO₂ reduction contribution has been revised. (Difinition of the size of contribution in reducing CO₂ emissions)

• Environmental Action Plan