TaKaRa: The Company That Cares About the Environment A "Green" Balance Sheet A company procures money from investors in capital markets to run a business, and if the business does well and the company makes a profit, it repays its investors by paying interest or dividends. We say a company's finances are "in the black" if it makes a profit. We say the company is "in the red" if it doesn't, because red ink was once used in accounting books to distinguish liabilities from assets, which were entered in black. The company's financial statement informs investors in the company, its shareholders, of the company's assets and liabilities. The same could be said of natural inputs and outputs: all TaKaRa products come ultimately from resources that can only be "procured" from the natural environment. To produce them, we use energy, which also comes from Nature. Even wastes from the manufacturing process and from the consumption of our products by consumers return to Nature in the end. Hence, if our company's business depends so much on Nature's bounty, shouldn't we also report our environmental "assets and liabilities" to stakeholders in the environment? We at TaKaRa have decided to call our account of our corporate activities' environmental impacts our "green ink" account. Every year, we intend to submit our annual "green balance sheet" to the world community, stakeholders in Nature. "In The Green"? It is undeniable that as long as a company continues to manufacture things, the act of production impacts the environment. But companies can do something about it, by damping these impacts or compensating for them in some way. Corporate contributions can be made in two areas: We have decided to quantify and convert these contributions into "green" indices of environmental burden reductions and good corporate citizenship, which we will post as percentages on our "Green Balance Sheet" (this brochure). We will use these indices to assess our environmental management performance over year-long periods, weighing the environmental impacts against our offsetting contributions to society. Note: Rates of reduction in various components of environmental impacts are measured in terms of the total quantity. (Rates of improvement in the unit of production are considered separately as corporate efforts.) Note: The 1997 fiscal year is the baseline for the "Green Balance," which indicates the rate of improvement thereafter on a fiscal year basis. The fiscal 1997 baseline is defined as "0 eco", where 1 eco is an improvement of 1% in the Green Balance.

TaKaRa's Green Profit and Loss Statement (environmental balance sheet) for fiscal 1997 (April 1997 to March 1998)
Environmental burden					Contribution to the natural environment
Procurement of raw materials	Procurement of resources and energy	Release of waste water and gaseous emissions	Non-recycled waste generation on production processes	Generation of post-consumer packaging waste that will not be recycled	Natural environment protection and education activities
		Waste water 5,830,000 cubic meters
Raw materials 110,000 tons	Water 7,250,000 cubic meters	CO2 50,600 t-C	16,363 tons	37,000 tons
Packaging (only virgin material) 36,000 tons	Electricity 37,000,000 kWh	NOx 290 tons
	Fuel 27,800 kl	SOx 341 tons
Cost of disposal or action	305 million yen			624 million yen	94 million yen

Fiscal 1997 Green Balance
Environmental burden reduction 0 eco	Corporate citizenship contribution 0 eco

Green Balance Accounting in Greater Depth * Calculation of "Green" Impact Reductions Environmental impact components and extent to which corporate efforts translate into changes Environmental burden Effect of corporate efforts to reduce it (1) Procurement of raw materials: i) Raw materials, ii) packaging, virgin materials Company efforts in this area, which include efforts directed at external factors, have little burden-reducing direct effect (2) Procurement of resources & energy: i) Water, ii) Electricity, iii) Fuel. (3) Generation of atmospheric emissions & liquid wastes: i) CO2 , ii) NOx, iii) SOx, iv) Liquid wastes. (4) Generation of wastes that are not recycled in the production process. Company efforts do reduce burdens directly. (5) Production of containers and packaging that are not recycled after consumption: i) Glass bottles, ii) Aluminum cans, iii) Steel cans, iv) Cartons, v) PET bottles, vi) Cardboard. Consumer preferences affect container choices; since social systems play a large role in container recycling, individual companies' efforts are rarely reflected directly in increased recycling rates. Calculation of the fiscal 1997 reduction rate: This is defined as the "Green burden reduction," a combination of weighted average reductions in the above items, where the weighting factors are: i) seriousness of the problem at that point in time; ii) degree to which corporate efforts are reflected in results. * Calculation of "Green Contribution to Society": Defined as the rate of increase in amounts spent on good corporate citizenship in fiscal 1997. HOME | TOP