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Working with Customers to Preserve the Environment
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| Takara Shuzo continues to develop products that are friendly to the environment and promotes refusing, reducing, reusing and recycling (4Rs) of containers, in collaboration with our customers. |
Development of Eco-Products
Takara Shuzo promotes the development of eco-products (environmentally friendly products) and makes every effort to select environmentally friendly packaging materials for containers. We are working on 4R activities that consist of refuse- (to avoid generation), reduce-, reuse- and recycle-oriented initiatives. |
Takara Shuzo’s Main Eco-Products |
| Refuse |
| Realizing resource conservation and waste reduction through bulk sales of shochu |
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List of retailers offering bulk sales
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Bulk selling can be termed a “refusal” practice in that only the contents and not the container are sold. Customers bring their empty (PET) bottles to a retailer. Takara Shuzo delivers shochu in 1-kiloliter or 200-liter special tanks to retail stores directly from its factory. The retail stores rinse the bottles brought by customers and refill them with shochu as required. While bulk selling is a traditional selling method for liquor, Takara has greatly modernized the process. For customers, this system is advantageous in that they can purchase the product inexpensively because no container cost is added, they can buy as much as they require and they don’t have to worry about piles of empty containers at home. The bulk selling system uses manpower to conserve resources. This has realized resource conservation and waste reduction through cooperation among consumers, retailers and the manufacturer based on a relationship of mutual trust. Currently, about 220 outlets nationwide participate in this effort. As of March 2007, approximately 3.9 million 2.7-liter PET bottles and 650,000 cardboard boxes have been saved since the launch of this campaign in 1998. |
| Reduce |
| Reducing the environmental burden by trimming the weight of containers |
A shift to lighter packaging is expected to bring about certain mitigating effects on our environmental burden, including conservation of resource consumption at the manufacturing phase and a reduction in fuel consumption during the product transport phase. Takara Shuzo is therefore making efforts to reduce the weight of various product containers. For example, we introduced lighter containers for the Shochu EcoPET lines in fiscal 2002 and for Takara Shochu JUN 720-ml returnable bottle products in fiscal 2003. In 2004, Takara Organic Hon-Mirin obtained the Eco Mark(*1) for adopting an ultra-light glass bottle that is about 30% or 100 g lighter than the previous bottle. By the use of this ultra-light bottle, energy consumption and CO2 emissions were reduced by 3.5% and 6.2%, respectively. In addition, Takara Shuzo’s environmental consideration is embodied by Takara Organic Hon-Mirin. It uses kenaf paper for the label and adopts a “releasable cap.” After consumption, the cap can easily be released from the bottle by pulling a tear strip to make separation and recycling easier. The ultra-light bottles are also used for Takara Organic Hon-Ryori Seishu and Honkaku Kome Shochu Jikomi “Takara” Kyo-Mirin.
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