For products sold in fiscal year 2008, Sony used approximately 1.27 million tons of resources, on a par with fiscal year 2007, and approximately 130,000 tons of reused/recycled materials, dwon approximately 1% from fiscal year 2007. The total volume of resources used by the Sony Group in fiscal year 2007 was more or less the same as for the previous year.*1 This reflected the fact that production and shipment levels declined for the Sony Group as a whole, despite growth in unit sales of certain products, including LCD televisions. Under Green Management 2010, Sony is targeting an increase in its reused/recycled materials utilization rate*2 to 12% or higher. Accordingly, Sony is promoting the use of both reused and recycled materials and the reduction of product weight.
In fiscal year 2008, Sony achieved a reused/recycled materials utilization rate of approximately 10 % by increasing the amount of recycled materials used in a broad range of product categories, including televisions, audio units, camcorders, game consoles and PCs.
| *1 | Total volume of resources used: Total weight of resources used in products, accessories, manuals and packaging. The weight of total products shipped is substituted for this value. |
| *2 | Reused/recycled materials utilization rate: Reused/recycled materials used as a percentage of total materials used |
Sony aims to minimize consumption of the earth's exhaustible resources by making concerted efforts to use recycled plastics in its products. The Sony Group currently uses approximately 17,000 tons or more of recycled plastics annually in various products, including televisions, recording media, audio products, PCs and digital video cameras. Approximately 11% of them are post-industrial plastics and approximately 89% of them are post-consumer plastics. With the aim of further increasing use of these plastics, Sony has set its reused/recycled materials ratio targets at 12% or higher, and promoted the introduction of recycled plastic in products, and also made active technological development efforts.
Using Plastics Recycled Internally
For the past decade, Sony has promoted environmental product designs with a view toward recycling and reusing end-of-life products. This approach has enabled to remove contaminants from scrap recovered from cathode ray tube (CRT) televisions, facilitating the recycling of these units into plastic.
A proprietary additive makes it possible to recycle polystyrene foam waste into polystyrene materials with improved impact- and flame-resistance for use in components for new televisions.
The success of Sony's efforts to promote self-contained recycling was recognized in fiscal year 2008 when Sony received an award ' in the Resource Recycling Technology Systems Awards. *1
*1 Sponsored by the Clean Japan Center, under the aegis of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry
Sony is able to use general polystyrene foam waste used for food trays in its products through a process that gives the waste material impact resistant and flame retardant properties. For example, the processed waste is used for the internal components and casings of home theater stereo systems.
Sony constantly strives to increase the utilization rate of such materials. To this end, Sony is targeting a two-fold increase in the use of recycled polystyrene by fiscal year 2010 compared with the fiscal year 2006 utilization rate.
Introduction of Recycled Polycarbonate
Sony has succeeded in developing a method that recycles waste CDs into a material used for the casings of products. Near-new quality polycarbonate materials are produced by recycling waste polycarbonate CDs generated by optical disc manufacturer Sony DADC Japan Inc. in Japan using proprietary technology (Creating Recycled Plastics from Discarded CDs) and equipment that remove the surface coating.
Vegetable-based plastics are derived from biomass, (i.e., plant matter-based resources) and are therefore superior to conventional plastics in the following ways.
· reducing petroleum consumption
· controlling greenhouse gas emissions*1
Sony has promoted ambitious efforts to develop and utilize Vegetable-based plastics, taking care in its selection of biomass to avoid edible plants. Sony led the industry with its adoption in 2000 of vegetable-based plastic as packaging materials. Applications to date include components and unit bodies for "Walkman" and DVD players. Sony's health insurance union has also produced 150,000 membership cards using this material. In another initiative, student and staff at Shohoku College in Japan have adopted contactless IC identification cards made from vegetable-based plastics. This represents a world first in the use of a contactless IC chip in a student identification card.
In fiscal year 2008, Sony commenced use of bioplastics made from oil derived from the seeds of the castor oil plant in certain components used in OLED televisions (XEL-1) bound for the European market*2. Since fiscal year 2007, Sony has manufactured plastic body caps for its DSLR-A380 digital single-lens reflex camera. This plastic is not merely made from a vegetable-based plastics, but its abrasion resistance also helps enhance performance.
In addition to using vegetable-based plastics, Sony is also engaged in the development of proprietary production technologies. For example, Sony has developed technology for the high-speed crystallization of polylactic acid (PLA), another vegetable-based plastics.*3 This technology enables the production of molded components with excellent thermal-resistance in a shorter time.
| *1 | The use of vegetable-based plastics ensures much lower CO2 emissions over a product's life cycle-i.e., from the production of raw materials to the disposal of the finished product-because the plant matter from which the raw materials are derived absorbs CO2 through photosynthesis during cultivation. |
| *2 | XEL-I(SONY UK) |
| *3 | 19th Annual Conference of the Japan Society of Polymer Processing "Improved injection molding process of Poly(lactic-acid)/Poly(carbonate) blend in adding new nuclear agents." |
The purpose of packaging is to protect a product from the time it leaves the factory until it arrives in the hands of the customer. Having fulfilled its function, however, it is generally disposed of at this point. Since 1989, Sony has made improvements to packaging through a number of projects implemented with the aim of promoting the use of environmentally conscious packaging. Sony protects the products by not only using the minimum amount of materials but also using easily recyclable materials and materials for which well-ordered recycling systems exist, as well as recycled materials. Additionally, Sony promotes to optimize the volume of product packaging to improve product loading efficiency during transportation with the aim of reducing environmental impact of transportation. Moreover, to make it easy for customers to separate packaging materials for recycling, Sony has adopted packaging that is easy-to-separate and clearly marked.
For example, Sony has reduced both packaging volume and the amount of packaging materials used for PSP® (PlayStation®Portable) model PSP-3000 and VAIO™ PCG-NW70JB, while also advancing transportation efficiency. Additionally, for the USM-L series of USB Memory Stick Sony has increased transportation efficiency by devising new and innovative ways to utilize packaging materials, thereby lowering environmental burden in transit.
Sony has also implemented the strict management of chemical substances in packaging materials. See details (Link)
Sony's packaging-related activities are not limited to conserving resources and reducing packaging materials, but extend to efforts aimed at minimizing the incineration and landfilling of packaging as final disposal. To this end, Sony adopts comprehensive measures, including the development of new technologies and attention to recycling and the safety of materials used in packaging.
The amount of packaging materials used in fiscal year 2008 was 170,000 tons.*
*This includes all the packaing materials used for the product shipment worldwide.
Sony strives to reduce the amount of resources such as packaging materials used in logistics through improvement of packaging technology.
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Sony is implementing measures to reduce the packaging used for disc-based products, including music and movies.
The United States
With the release of the DVD for the hit movie Paul Blart: Mall Cop, the Sony Pictures Home Entertainment division of Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) introduced an ultra-light, environmentally conscious DVD case on single-disc DVDs. The new packaging is designed to use approximately 20% less plastic than a standard-weight DVD case and reduce the DVD case carbon footprint by 20% (for example, the carbon generated from manufacturing the case decreased from approximately 182 grams of CO2-e to 156 grams per case, and a new packaging and stacking process enabled approximately 20% more DVDs to be carried per pallet). The ultra-light package will be rolled out to all single-packaged DVDs in SPE's library.
During 2008 and in early 2009, Sony Music Entertainment has continued to issue frontline and catalog releases in plastic-free, environmentally conscious packages, many of which use recycled materials. These environmentally conscious packaging efforts span the company's labels, divisions and global operations. In the U.S., more than 350 titles were released in environmentally conscious packages, including, but not limited to, DBS Disc box slider packs, BioD packs, RePaks, and softpacks. As part of its overall environmentally conscious packaging program, Sony Music recently obtained licensing permission to feature the 100% Recycled Paperboard logo on its qualifying packages, which include Legacy Records Playlist series featuring "Very Best Of" albums from some of the world's most popular artists. This series applies 100% recycled paperboard and does not use either plastic or booklets. Legacy's Disc box slider pack series were offered with environmentally conscious packaging for all releases from artists such as Britney Spears and Alicia Keys. Many covers featured green stickers, which said, "First They Went Platinum. Now They're Going Green!"
Europe
In fiscal year 2008, Sony DADC in Austria developed its proprietary disc packaging "Bend-it Green." It is made of 100% recycled cardboard or FSC/PEFC certified material and uses a variety of environmentally sustainable inks, glues and varnishes. Compared to other disc packages, it causes 50% less carbon emissions during production. Bend-it Green is easy to recycle, as there is no separation of components. The brand name stands for an unconventional bend-out disc holder function, which makes handling very easy.
Because it reduces the carbon footprint of an album so effectively, Bend-it Green has been recognized by Julie's Bicycle, a UK-based music industry-led NPO set up to recognize commitment to reducing green house gas emissions and promote environmental sustainability. Sony Music's BRIT Awards Album 2009 packed in Bend-it Green is the first of its kind to be awarded the Industry Green Standard for CD packaging, branded as the Music Industry Green Mark.
Besides Sony Music, Bend-it Green has already been used by various independent music publishers and for promotional discs from diverse companies.
Japan
Sony Pictures Entertainment (Japan) Inc. (SPEJ) has begun using environmentally conscious rental DVD cases for the first time in the domestic DVD business. SPEJ now delivers to rental stores DVD protective cases consisting of simple cardboard-based eco packaging (Secolo™) instead of those made from plastics. By changing to this new packaging not only have SPEJ achieved a reduction of approximately 10 tons in half a year in the amount of plastic used , but SPEJ has also cut down on volume by one-fifth and total weight by around 60%, meaning that there is a parallel reduction in CO2 emissions during transportation.
