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About Toshiba > Social and Environmental Activities > Environmental Management > Eco Processes > Recycling of End-of-Life Products:
In Japan, Toshiba Group collects, transports, and recycles end-of-life home appliances in accordance with the Law for the Recycling of Specified Kinds of Home Appliances and the Act on the Promotion of Effective Utilization of Resources. In FY2008, it collected some 1.8 million end-of-life home appliances, accounting for 14% of all collected appliances, and this remained almost at the same level as the previous year. And 26,000 end-of-life PCs were collected from business firms and homes for recycling. With respect to liquid crystal TV sets and clothes dryers, which came to be covered by the Law for the Recycling of Specified Kinds of Home Appliances in April 2009, Toshiba Group will work with disposers to ensure appropriate treatment of hazardous substances and efficient collection and recycling of items with value.
As part of its initiative for recycling end-of-life products, Toshiba Group concentrates on developing recycling technology to utilize resources recovered from end-of-life products. Plastic parts used for washing machine tubs and refrigerator vegetable containers and shelves are collected before they are crushed, and sorted by material type so that they can be reused as parts for new refrigerators as well as base plates of new washing machines/dryers and dish washers/dryers. Other plastic materials are also used effectively after they are recycled into raw materials for construction materials and sundry goods.
The cabinets (back covers) of TV sets collected in accordance with the Law for the Recycling of Specified Kinds of Home Appliances are reused as raw plastic materials for TV parts*.
Toshiba Home Appliances recycles plastics collected from waste home appliances into parts for new home appliances by establishing a supply chain, including the collection of plastic parts at home appliance disposal plants (such as Term Corporation and Nishinihon Kaden Recycle Corporation) and the processing of materials. The quality of collected plastics as materials-such as strength, durability, and color tone-is maintained by removing foreign substances from them, treating them with additives, or otherwise processing them. Thus efforts are being made to increase the percentage of recycled materials used (i.e., minimize the percentage of virgin materials used).
Recycled plastic parts are used for the base plate and other parts of the TW-5000VF washing machine/dryer. The weight of recycled plastic parts used for this model is about 5.7 kg/unit.
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