Guidelines for Environmental Action / Environment Promotion Organization
Policy (Guidelines for Environmental Action)
Basic Philosophy
At Hitachi High-Tech, we aim to be a company that is trusted by all of our stakeholders, and to contribute to the progress of society through business activities based around value creation through high-tech solutions. Our management is trusted as fair and transparent, and in addition to continual growth, we value "harmony with the environment," and endeavor to create a vibrant society as a corporate citizen that fulfills its social responsibilities with enthusiasm and pride.
Hitachi High-Tech Corporation Guidelines for Environmental Action
The Guidelines are intended to guide our actions for addressing environmental conservation in relation to our business activities.
Purpose
In order to realize an environmentally harmonious and sustainable society through products and services, Hitachi High-Tech Corporation is committed to meeting its social responsibilities by promoting globally-applicable "MONOZUKURI" (designing, manufacturing or repairing of products), which is aimed at reducing environmental burdens of products throughout their entire life cycles, ensuring global environmental conservation.
Action Guidelines
- Global environmental conservation is a critical challenge shared by all humans. Hitachi High-Tech Corporation is committed, therefore, to fulfilling its responsibilities by assisting in the realization of an environmentally harmonious and sustainable society as one of its management priorities.
- Hitachi High-Tech Corporation will make efforts to contribute to society by developing highly reliable technologies and production processes, while identifying needs considering concerns related to the prevention of global warming, cyclical use of resources, and conservation of biodiversity.
-
Members of the board in charge of environmental conservation are responsible for facilitating appropriate environmental conservation activities.
Departments responsible for environmental conservation should endeavor to promote and ensure environmental conservation activities, including improving environment-related rules and regulations and setting goals for environmental burden reduction.
These departments should also confirm that their environmental conservation activities are conducted in a proper manner and ensure that these activities are maintained and improved. - Hitachi High-Tech Corporation will promote globally-applicable "MONOZUKURI" with the aim of understanding and reducing environmental burdens not only at every stage, including product research and development, design, procurement, production, distribution, sales, usage and final disposal, but also in handling other companies' products.
-
Hitachi High-Tech Corporation will investigate and review the environmental impact caused in the course of its "MONOZUKURI" processes.
Hitachi High-Tech Corporation will also introduce excellent technologies and materials useful to safeguard the environment, in other words, to reduce environmental burdens through energy and resource saving, chemical substance management, recycling, consideration for the ecosystem, and other measures. - Hitachi High-Tech Corporation's environmental conservation efforts are not only to be focused on observing international environmental regulations and those of national and local governments, but also on conserving the environment by implementing voluntary environmental standards when necessary.
- Regarding globally-applicable "MONOZUKURI" activities, impact on the local environment and community are to be considered. In addition, measures that meet local communities' requests should be implemented.
- Hitachi High-Tech Corporation will educate its employees to take action in order to obey environment-related laws, raise their global environmental awareness, and encourage their interest in environmental conservation having wide-view about society activities.
-
Hitachi High-Tech Corporation will evaluate potential environmental problems and prevent them from occurring.
In the event that any environmental problem occurs, Hitachi High-Tech Corporation will take appropriate measures to minimize the environmental burden. -
Hitachi High-Tech Corporation will make efforts to disclose information on its environmental conservation activities to its relevant stakeholders.
Hitachi High-Tech Corporation will also actively communicate with these stakeholders so as to strengthen mutual understanding and forge cooperative relationships with them. Adopted Jan. 2003, revised Apr. 2011
Organization (Environment Promotion Organization)
An environmental management promotion organization is in place, covering the entire Hitachi High-Tech Group, for the purpose of strengthening environmental management and promoting efficient environmental activities.
In order to promote efficient environmental activity, each domestic Group company has been classified according to their type of business into one of three blocks (sales, manufacturing, and services). In addition, the Environmental Strategy Manager for our Group, who oversees the entire Group's environmental activities, has additionally appointed an Environment Promotion Manager for each block and is engaged in setting up environmental management organizations, establishing action policies, and so on for the respective blocks.
The purpose of the Environmental Committee is to formulate strategic policy and measures for environmental activities in general at Group business sites as well as to take steps to minimize environmental risks and the risks of chemical substances in products. To that end, the Committee strengthens governance and shares information. We are also building the organizational structure to implement more finely-grained administration of our environmental activities as a whole. Under this committee, we have established two subcommittees. The first is the Environmental Strategy Promotion Subcommittee, which consists of managers who directly promote environmental activities at domestic manufacturing, service, sales sites, and environmental managers. The other is the Global Environment Sales Subcommittee, which consists of members appointed from each site involved in activities to reduce the risk of chemical substances contained in products and so on in commercial transactions.The position of Environmental Committee chair is taken by the senior executive responsible for environmental management. The chair makes decisions on those matters in deliberation that have an impact on business and on those matters that raise issues for internal control, and the chair reports on these to the Internal Control Management Committee. Other duties are to identify Climate Change Risks that affect business operations, act on the basis of risk assessment to classify risks for treatment as priority issues or for continuous monitoring, and promote measures to address them.
One of the materiality issues for our Group is Contributing to a Sustainable Global Environment, and we are also formulating plans for specific policies and initiatives regarding (1) realizing a decarbonized society, (2) realizing a resource efficient society, and (3) realizing a harmonized society with nature. Through evaluation of the results from each site, we promote the harvesting of further benefits. In addition, important matters relating to environmental strategy are proposed to and discussed by the Sustainability Promotion Committee, which is chaired by the President and has directors and executive officers as its members.
Thorough Response to Global Environmental Risk and Compliance Issues
For each domestic region and each business site of our Group companies, including those located overseas, we are establishing voluntary standards that are more stringent than required by their national or regional regulations and we are working toward compliance with those standards. In addition, we endeavor to prevent environmental accidents by identifying latent environmental risks and checking our compliance with environmental legislation through reciprocal environmental audits.
As for risk management for product manufacturing and services, we conduct periodic provisions of information and on-site instruction through the Environmental Strategy Promotion Subcommittee.
We will continue to promote the further reduction of environmental regulatory risks by identifying business processes with a high degree of environmental regulatory risk at our divisions and Group companies and by making improvements.
With regard to the environmental laws that our domestic sites are subject to, we have been managing the distribution of information on revisions and compliance assessment thorough the Environmental Legislation Management System, which we developed in-house in FY2014.
Regarding risk management for sales transactions by overseas Group companies, we are working to reduce risk by sharing and disseminating information at the Global Environment Sales Subcommittee, which is a corporate function. From FY2019, we have taken steps for the purpose of reducing risks in the business transactions of our overseas Group companies by using the functions of the Japan-oriented Environmental Legislation Management System to effectively disseminate shared information on revisions and regulatory trends that is relevant to business operations by Group companies in other countries in a timely manner. In this way we are working to grasp the status of regulatory compliance in our overseas Group companies. Going forward, we will improve the operation of this system and promote further risk reduction. In FY2022, we built a risk visualization system as a mechanism for identifying and improving potential risks through risk assessment in the business transactions of overseas Group companies, and we plan to start practical operation in FY2023.
The Hitachi High-Tech Group will keep endeavoring to buttress environmental management throughout the Group, aiming to avoid and mitigate business risks as we accelerate global business development including through M&A.
In FY2022, there were no serious legal violations related to the environment.
*1 President and Representative Director: The President and Representative Director serves as Chair of the Sustainability Promotion Committee, which has senior management as it members and has the duty of working to promote activities related to sustainability, including climate-related matters.
*2 CRO: The Chief Risk Management Officer (CRO) is the general manager in charge of risk across the entire company, and as Chair of the Internal Control Supervisory Committee is responsible for minimizing operating risks, including environmental risks, and for establishing an emergency response system.