Sustainability
Formulation of the Fourth Five-Year Environmental Action Plan
March 31, 2016
NGK INSULATORS, LTD. (President Taku Oshima; Headquarters: Nagoya, Japan) announced today that it has formulated a Fourth Five-Year Environmental Action Plan to set targets for the Group's environmental actions from fiscal 2016 to fiscal 2020.
The NGK Group aims to contribute to a low-carbon, recycling-oriented society that also exists in harmony with the natural environment, and to achieve sustainable growth through its business activities. Since initiating its five-year environmental action plans in fiscal 2001, the Group has steadily accumulated results through environmental actions that respond to the demands of society at the time. This Fourth Five-Year Environmental Action Plan has been formulated following the completion of the Third Five-Year Environmental Action Plan in March 2016.
Overview of the Fourth Five-Year Environmental Action Plan
The Fourth Five-Year Environmental Action Plan has a list of environmental actions that covers the issues global environmental management indicators and guidelines have called on corporations to resolve. The Company will take action in line with the following approaches.
■The corporate philosophy, "NGK products and technologies must create new value and contribute to the quality of life," will be interpreted from an environmental perspective to prioritize the development and distribution of products contributing to environmental protection.
■The new and reformed manufacturing structures NGK is promoting with the objective of creating resilient and efficient manufacturing sites will be combined with the reduction of environmental loads to cut down on the Group's global CO2 and discarded materials emissions. To this end, the KPIs for lowering emissions will be indexed to fiscal 2013 to coincide with the launch of NGK's initiative for creating new and reformed manufacturing structures.
■Environmental actions for managing water resource risks, streamlining water usage, and conserving biodiversity will be strengthened in response to increasing demand from society.
■NGK will continue to engage proactively in environmental communication activities.
The main targets under the Fourth Five-Year Environmental Action Plan are as follows.
1.The Group will aim to increase the sales of products contributing directly to environmental protection by more than 60% from fiscal 2013 to fiscal 2020, while maintaining the sales composition above 50%. These include components for purifying automotive exhaust, such as HONEYCERAM ceramic substrates for automotive catalytic converters, diesel particulate filters (DPFs), and high precision vehicle-mounted nitrogen oxide (NOx) sensors; NAS batteries for storing electricity and contributing to the wider adoption of renewable energy; and equipment for processing low-level radioactive discarded materials.
2.Targets for substantially lowering CO2 and discarded materials emitted from manufacturing have been set on a consolidated basis to promote a reduction in NGK's global environmental load.
(1) The Group aims to lower basic unit per net sales of CO2 emitted from manufacturing by 20% in fiscal 2020 compared to fiscal 2013, and by 15% from business as usual (BAU*) as a measure of emissions reduced by environmental actions.
(2) The Group aims to lower basic unit per net sales of discarded materials emitted from manufacturing activities by 30% in fiscal 2020 compared to fiscal 2013, and by 15% from BAU as a measure of emissions reduced by environmental actions.
*Reduction from BAU (business as usual) measures the percentage rate of reduction in emissions in relation to a hypothetical absence of environmental actions.
3.NGK will expand and enhance environmental actions for attaining the Aichi Target*, an international target for conserving biodiversity.
*The Aichi Target comprises 20 individual goals agreed upon at the 10th Meeting of the Conference of Parties to the Convention of Biological Diversity (COP 10) held in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture, in 2010.
4.NGK will expand and enhance environmental actions at individual production bases for managing water resource risks and streamlining water usage.
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Actions for environmental compliance (with laws and regulations) will be taken on a daily basis as items under NGK's environmental management system.