Activities to Reduce Environmental Impacts (2) Product Development Product Development that Connects Environmental Policy to Cost Competitiveness

Environmental policy is often thought of as an increased cost for businesses. This impression has been a psychological obstacle to the involvement of corporations in environmental action. But at Takara Shuzo, we've taken up the slogan "Cost Competitiveness Through Environmental Policy". While it's true that there are areas of environmental policy that raise costs, we want to focus on the policies that can actually lower costs as we create products in harmony with the environment.

1. Reconsidering appropriate energy and resource use from an environmental viewpoint

Cutting environmental impacts at the production planning stage is more cost-effective than treating those impacts at a final stage. In general, greater resource and energy use leads to greater impact on the environment, obstacles to recycling, and in the end, extra costs. Until recently, added value in products placed consumer convenience, quality assurance, and design excellence over environmental considerations. However, with the true utility to the consumer of these added values hard to judge, they have in some cases become over-emphasized in the competitive marketplace, leading to environment impact and increased costs.

In our case, we put a handle on our PET bottles as a consumer convenience, but this proved to be an obstacle to recycling. By removing the handle, we improved recycling efficiency and reduced costs. For the consumer, we changed the design to incorporate indentations for easier handling, cutting the loss of convenience to a minimum.

In our paper cartons, an aluminum foil lining aids preservation of quality but is an obstacle to recycling, leaving large amounts of residue after incineration. We developed a new technology called "Aluminum Steam Adherance" which enables an extremely thin foil that preserved the same level of quality while reducing both environmental impacts and costs.

As another example, it was pointed out to us that the attractive embossed label design for our Hon-mirin product was hard to remove. We switched to a wrap-around paper label that enabled cheaper recycling and lower costs.

2. Low-impact Products will lead to Lower Costs.

Considering a company's environmental impact as a cost, we see two divisions: the treatment cost paid by the company and the cost paid by the environment. The latter cost equals environmental destruction. And we're now at the point where we humans are beginning to pay that cost.

If we humans have to bear these environmental costs, then products with a lower environmental impact become low-cost. Low-impact products may cost more now, but they cost less later on. For example, using "green procurement" in material for gift boxes and expanding use of returnable bottles and bulk sales will reduce the cost on the environment and eventually create cost advantages for our company. We have begun these steps.

3. Improving Products to Reduce Environmental Impact

* Following the lead of our 2.7-liter EcoPet bottles, we improved our 4-liter bottles as well, incorporating the handle into the design for easier recycling of the PET material.
* We redesigned the bottle caps for Hon-mirin and cooking sake to be removable from the bottle for easy recycling.
* We changed the bottle for ARack shochu from a difficult-to-recycle, colored, one-way bottle to a clear, returnable bottle.
* We changed 14.8% of the sales volume of canned beverages to low-impact tulc cans.