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- Environment ｜ Clean Plants and Offices
We are a transportation manufacturer focusing on automobiles. Automobiles, a convenient and comfortable form of transportation, are now indispensable for living in a modern society. On the other hand, automobiles draw on limited global resources as materials and fuels. Consequently, they emit CO2, which causes global warming, as well as other air pollutants. We have to work very hard to realize an affluent automobile society but fully understand that automobiles also have disadvantages as well as their benefits. With these in mind, we must work even harder for a better future. SUBARU accepts the task of working towards the fusion of a global environmental response (drastically improving fuel economy and reducing gas emissions) with the benefits of automobiles (pleasant driving, comfort, and reliability) by considering environmental impacts and reducing the environmental burden throughout the entire life cycle of automobiles, including development, production, use, disposal, and recycling.
■ Overall Environmental Burden for the Automotive Business
*2 PRTR: Pollutant Release and Transfer Register. System for tracking, compiling, and reporting on the discharge, usage, and transportation of pollutant chemicals.
*3 ASR: Automobile Shredder Residue. Residue after scrapped metals for recycling have been removed from shredded car bodies. Also known as Shredder Dust.
Approaches to Preventing Global Warming
We have installed a total of six natural gas cogeneration systems in Utsunomiya Manufacturing Division, Gunma Manufacturing Division, and SUBARU General Training Center. These systems not only generate power but also utilize exhaust heat for air conditioning and other purposes. In July 2012 we installed an additional cogeneration system as a countermeasure against power supply shortages.
As well as these cogeneration systems, we have been implementing various means of CO2 emissions reduction and energy saving, such as reducing standby electricity and making energy intensive processes more efficient. Although the total emissions volume varies from year to year due to changes in production volume, a total of about 203,000 tons of CO2 was emitted in FY2012. This was 26% lower than the level of FY1991. We successfully achieved our FY2012 target set in the 4th Voluntary Plan for the Environment, which was a "15% reduction for the total CO2 emissions volume against FY1991," and then realized our subsequent target to "further reduce CO2 emissions by 22% against the FY1991 level."
Power shortages have become increasingly serious following he Great East Japan Earthquake. During summer 2011, when supply insufficiencies were common, we participated in reducing the nation-wide peak power usage as a member of the automobile industry by altering our business closing days from weekends to Thursdays and Fridays. We also managed to keep power consumption at our business sites, where power is supplied by Tokyo Electric Power Co., Inc., down to 85% of the allowance by increasing the efficiency of our business operations and introducing our own power generation systems.
Energy saving promotion poster
Super Cool Biz as an Energy Saving Measure
In the Shinjuku SUBARU Building, Omiya SUBARU Building, and SUBARU General Training Center, we adopted the "Super Cool Biz scheme" from June 1 to October 31 as a part of our FY2012 summer energy saving measures. The Super Cool Biz scheme allows employees to wear light and less formal clothing in the office during the summer time so that they can work comfortably with the room temperature set to 28℃+1℃. This group effort by many employees resulted in reducing power consumption by 15% during the period.
The System Data Center is replacing its servers with energy-saving models one by one. The new models can host multiple systems on a single server, and we are further reducing the number of servers by integrating them. The maximum number of servers possessed by the Center was about 350, which was reduced by 45 at the end of March 2012. This can be converted to an 88.695 ton-CO2 emissions reduction*4 per year. The fewer the number of servers, the less the heat to be exhausted. Thus, the workload of the air conditioners has also been reduced, as well as our power usage contract. We are continuing our efforts by aiming to reduce the number of servers to approximately 100 by the end of FY2017.
*4 The calculation uses the government-recommended CO₂ emission factor (0.375 kg-CO2/kWh), suggested in the Ministerial Ordinance Concerning Calculation of Carbon Dioxide Equivalent Greenhouse Gas Emissions by Specified Emitters' Business Activities (Ordinance of the Ministry of the Environment No. 3 of 2012).
Replacing SUBARU Parts Distribution Center Lighting with LED Lights
SUBARU Parts Center has been systematically updating the premises' lighting. In March 2012, we changed all the lighting in the premises from conventional fluorescent lights to LED lights—which have the advantage of much lower energy consumptions—as a part of our energy saving activities. The replacement LED lights achieved a 61.9% reduction in lighting power consumption, while also increasing brightness by 1.3 times over previous levels, where necessary.
Maintaining Zero Emissions for Waste Materials at All Manufacturing Plants
All manufacturing plants have maintained zero emissions for waste materials since 2004. Outline of waste materials generated and treated in FY2012 is as follows.
■ Outline of Waste Materials Generated and Treated at All Manufacturing Plants and Automobile Manufacturing (Gunma Manufacturing Division) in FY2012
Efforts to Reduce Waste Materials
Since we consider that the generation of waste materials itself is a" waste," we have been making a continuous effort to achieve "zero emissions" and to curb the generation of waste materials.
We have been striving to effectively utilize resources by improving the yield ratio of raw materials used in the production stages and enhancing coating efficiency at paint factories. The right graph shows the indexes obtained by dividing the ratio of the amount of by-productsunder the laws for the Promotion of the Effective Utilization of Resources. In FY2012, we got the best result ever: 6.83 ton/100 million yen.
■ Amount of By-products Generated to outputs of Products
