1998 Green Activity Plan

• Here are a few of the activities planned during fiscal 1998 • An "Eco-Office Campaign" will be launched to reduce the environmental burden of office work activities. Goals: to use less copy paper, electricity, to improve company car fuel efficiency, and to recycle photocopier toner cartridges • Improvement in the industrial waste recycling rate (fiscal 1998 target: 80%) • Promotion of energy saving in distilling processes at TaKaRa's three factories • Work toward ISO 14001 certification • Continued support for nature conservation, expansion of recycling awareness activities • Switching of shochu PET containers to Eco-PET bottles • Less use of PVC containers, development of substitutes • If any containers now in use are found to release endocrine disrupting chemicals ("hormone-mimickers"), switch to other materials (that either do not release these chemicals or release less of them)

The Green Balance Sheet's Future Challenges
Our Green Balance's starting point is 1997; this will be our baseline for comparison of TaKaRa Shuzo's future environmental protection activities. With the economic climate worsening, corporate commitments to natural environment protection tend to falter, but this must not be allowed to happen. It is a fact that the activities related to the environment that companies carry out for their corporate conscience's sake tend to be toned down when competition heats up and profits sink.
Yet environmental problems have attained such gravity that not an hour must be lost before we begin to tackle them. The growing problem of packaging waste, the emerging problem of hormone-mimickers, together with the appearance of other new environmental concerns, are daily becoming more serious, and we must respond.
Precisely at times like these, it is vital to ensure that responses to environmental problems and attempts to stimulate economic activity go hand in hand. The "Green Balance" is an important indicator for the age of environmentally conscious business management. Needless to say, building industrial and social systems that establish a linkage between the company's being both "in the green" (i.e. ecologically correct) and "in the black" is vital. We look forward to the day when profits will rise precisely when companies strive to be "in the green." May it come soon!

Note: We were not able in this report to present data on our biotechnology business and on environmental impacts and new programs in other fields at TaKaRa. We firmly believe that our biotechnology will contribute to the solution of the Earth's environmental problems. In our next Green Balance Sheet, we hope to cover every aspect of TaKaRa's activities in a broader range of fields.
Note: This issue is "Number 0," signifying the starting point and baseline for the company's ecological policy program. Much remains to be done: broadening the scope and increasing the precision of our understanding of environmental impacts, introducing multi-faceted evaluations of containers' environmental impact, and studying the effects of so-called hormone-mimickers. We plan to make our Green Balance Sheet more precise in the future, and earnestly hope to receive your patronage, advice, and support.

Issuer: , 20, Naginatahoko-cho, Karasuma Higashi-iru, Shijo-dori, Shimogyo-ku, Kyoto 600-8688, Japan

If you have questions about anything in this report, please contact: Eco-Challenges 21, Tokyo Office, 2-15-10 Nihonbashi, Chuo-ku, Tokyo, 103-8232, Japan
TEL: 03-3278-8460 , FAX: 03-3271-8397