Toshiba has been making efforts to lessen their impact on the environment. In March 2008, they tied for first place in Greenpeace’s seventh edition of its Guide to Greener Electronics that ranks electronics companies according to their policies on toxic chemicals, recycling and climate change. Toshiba received 7.7 points out of ten points possible, showing its improvement in recycling and chemical use since the last edition when it was only ranked number six. Toshiba focused on improving their score in Individual Producer Responsibility (IPR), which measures how efficiently a company deals with e-waste that is created from their own products that are thrown away.
In Greenpeace’s Guide to Greener Electronics from November 2011 Toshiba ranked joint 13th (alongside LGE) out of 15 leading electronics manufacturers. In the revised edition the company benefited from having 2 penalty points lifted, one for backtracking on a commitment to make its new products PVC and BFR free by 2010, and the other for misleading its customers and Greenpeace by not admitting it would not meet this commitment. Despite this, Toshiba still scored badly, performing worst on the Energy section where it was criticized for not having a clean energy strategy and for not providing external verification of data on its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
The company fared better on Sustainable Operations being praised for providing data on its global recycling rates for TVs and PCs alongside a detailed breakdown. It was noted for having a detailed chemicals management programme and providing estimates of GHG emissions from each stage of a product’s lifecycle for its whole range of products.
Toshiba reports that all of its new LCD TVs comply with the Energy Star standards and 34 models exceed the requirements by 30% or more.
Toshiba also partnered with China’s Tsinghua University in 2008 in order to form a research facility to focus on energy conservation and the environment. The new Toshiba Energy and Environment Research Center is located in Beijing where forty students from the university will work to research electric power equipment and new technologies that will help stop the global warming process. Through this partnership, Toshiba hopes to develop products that will better protect the environment and save energy in China. This contract between Tsinghua University and Toshiba originally began in October 2007 when they signed an agreement on joint energy and environment research. The projects that they conduct work to reduce car pollution and to create power systems that don’t negatively affect the environment.
On December 28, 1970 Toshiba began the construction of unit 3 of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant which was damaged in the Fukushima I nuclear accidents on March 14, 2011. In April 2011 CEO Norio Sasaki declared nuclear energy would "remain as a strong option" even after the Fukishima I nuclear accidents.
No comments:
Post a Comment