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In order to realize a recycling-based society, manufacturers are required to reduce the volume of resources extracted and discharged as waste throughout the product life cycle. To that end, Toshiba Group is working on designs in line with reduce, reuse, and recycle, starting from the design and development of products.
“Reduce” refers to reducing the weight and size of products, as well as making products usable for longer by increasing their sturdiness and rendering them more energy-saving when they are used. “Reuse” involves offering parts as modules to make maintenance and upgrading easy among other measures. “Recycle” features such efforts as using recyclable materials for a wider range of products, reducing the number of parts, choosing materials carefully, and indicating the quality of the materials used.
Toshiba Group is working to recycle waste plastic materials generated from end-of-life and other products. In the case of washing machines, for example, it utilizes resources recovered from used washing tubs and reuses them for water inlet covers and base plates for the washing machines. In addition, the back cabinets of TVs are recycled by reusing them as bottom covers (for details see page 52).
In FY2008, a total of about 1,100 tons of recycled plastic materials were used for the base plates of washing machines, multifunctional peripherals (MFP), TVs, air-conditioners, notebook PCs, and other products. In the years to come, Toshiba Group will continue to use recycled materials for a wider range of products in order to contribute to the realization of a recycling-based society.
We will plan to increase the ratio of the recycled plastics up to 25% of our total plastics with the next voluntary plan.
Toshiba Group set the goal of reducing the volume of packaging materials used in Japan by 15% (per unit production) as compared to the FY2005 level by FY2010 and is promoting such initiatives as reducing the volume of packaging materials used, and reusing them, in the production, distribution, and sales processes.
In FY2008, Toshiba Group substantially reduced the volume of packaging materials it used, achieving a 16% reduction (per unit production) as compared to the FY2005 level. This means that it achieved the goal for FY2010 ahead of schedule. In the future, we will continue to apply examples of improvements to other initiatives for further improvement. We will also consider extending these initiatives to cover a wider range of operations.
It became possible to reduce the packaging volume by 30-40% as compared to the previous level by packing the LCD panel and its stand separately*. Toshiba Group will contribute to reducing CO2 emission in the distribution stage by improving the load factor.
Product units and their accessories used to be individually packaged inside carrier bags. We have succeeded in significantly decreasing cushioning materials, by enhancing cushioning performance of the carrier bags and packaging the product units and their accessories together in the bags. As a result, the amount of packaging materials used per set has decreased to a level about 50% lower than before the improvement was made.
We have made improvement whereby conventionally disposable wood containers or cardboard boxes with wood portions in their lower portions were switched for foldable steel recyclable boxes while ensuring loading strength during transport. This has resulted in a decrease of around 8% in packaging mass as well as a reduction of about 36 tons in the amount of wood used and waste per year.
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