A mixture of sulfuric acid and hydrogen peroxide is widely used to clean silicon wafers in semiconductor manufacturing processes. The waste mixture is treated with large amounts of water and other chemicals, generating large volumes of sludge and wastewater. Sony discovered that by adding a trace of nitric acid, the residue of hydrogen peroxide in the waste mixture decomposed into oxygen and water effectively. Using this phenomena Sony developed a technology to extract highly concentrated sulfuric acid containing no hydrogen peroxide from the waste mixture.
Sony Semiconductor Kyushu Corporation has been using this technology at its plant since 2001, and the extracted concentrated sulfuric acid is being put to good use as a neutralizer for wastewater treatment within the plant.

This process does not require heating or cooling and so contributes to savings in the energy consumed by the recycling equipment. In addition, the introduction of this equipment has reduced the volume of chemicals required for treating wastewater and it has also led to quality improvements of the treated water.

Sony makes effective use of waste optical discs from its disc manufacturing facilities by recycling them into polycarbonate resin. Waste discs are crushed, and then washed with chemicals and water to remove the coated film on the surface of the discs, resulting in clear flakes of polycarbonate resin. This recycling process, which involves the cooperation of recycling firms, yields a recycled polycarbonate resin that is almost equal in quality to virgin polycarbonate resin. A resin manufacturer working in cooperation with Sony blends the recycled polycarbonate resin with appropriate additives so that it is suitable for use in Sony products. One of the additives is a new environmentally conscious sulfur flame retardant, which is free of bromine and phosphorus developed by Sony. Polycarbonate resin containing this new flame retardant has outstanding flame retardancy and thermal resistance and is used in housings of digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) cameras and in components of digital still cameras.

In February 2011, Sony developed SoRPlas (name derived from Sony Recycled Plastic), a high-quality, low-cost, recycled plastic with flame retardant properties, which may be recycled several times. SoRPlas is a blend of waste optical sheets generated during the production process by Sony Group manufacturing facilities, and recycled polycarbonate resin derived from waste discs generated by optical disc factories -- within and outside the Sony Group -- during the manufacturing process. Sony also adds the described above new flame retardant it developed at its own laboratories. SoRPlas realizes high heat resistance and excellent durability. Ordinarily, the level of recycled materials contained in recycled plastics is less than 25%, but SoRPlas used in the bezel (screen rim) of BRAVIA LCD television KDL-40EX52H and other models contained the world's highest ratio of 99% recycled-materials, thereby contributing to a significant reduction in CO2 emissions.