CSR Procurement

Green Procurement

We can improve our commitment to the environment by working in collaboration with others. We are therefore coordinating our efforts with suppliers and transportation partners, who form an integral part of our business operations, and are accelerating the activities that extend well beyond corporate boundaries. We strive to minimize our environmental impact across the entire supply chain, focusing on the reduction of CO₂ emissions, resource recycling, chemical substance management, and biodiversity conservation.

We issued our Green Procurement Standards in March 1999 and are actively engaging in green procurement in order to promote the manufacture of environmentally conscious products in partnership with our suppliers. As a first step in collaborating with suppliers and achieving the goals outlined in our Environmental Action Plan - Green Plan 2018- we publicly issued an updated sixth edition of our Green Procurement Standards in January 2012. This renewed policy aims to establish approved supplier groups to deliver products and goods conforming to our vision of transforming into a Green Innovation Company. We urge our suppliers to reduce their environmental impacts in each business activity field, share achievements through collaboration, and encourage upstream supply chain business partners to reduce their environmental impact.

Calling on Suppliers to Reduce Their Environmental Impacts

In addition to ongoing requests to build environmental management systems and follow our chemical substance management policy, we urge suppliers to accelerate their efforts toward identifying and reducing GHG emissions, recycling resources, and protecting biodiversity.

For GHG emissions, we are using identification trials across the entire supply chain. We began with suppliers chosen according to provisional calculations of the GHG emissions of products delivered to Panasonic in order to first identify any issues arising from suppliers' GHG calculation processes. We briefed raw material suppliers and electric and electronic component manufacturers in July 2011, and processed part, contract, and other manufacturers in November 2011, urging suppliers to calculate and submit appropriate GHG emissions data. We received replies from 80 consenting suppliers, with global calculations taking into account GHG emissions from supplier domains, upstream domains (raw material suppliers and component manufacturers), and downstream domains (domestic import and logistics companies) multiplied by the ratio of sales to Panasonic.

The total emissions of products delivered to Panasonic were approximately 2.71 million tons. We commit to increasing these initiatives while considering factors like economic rationality between Panasonic and suppliers and the completeness of collected data.

Breakdown of the GHG Emissions of Products Delivered to Panasonic by 80 Suppliers (by Region)

Sharing Achievement through Collaboration

Since fiscal 2010, we have implemented ECO-VC1 activities in partnership with our suppliers, which aim to save energy and resources and use, wherever possible, recycled materials while streamlining costs when procuring parts. In addition to reducing CO₂ emissions, we expanded our activities to include recycling-oriented manufacturing in fiscal 2011. In fiscal 2012 we received 901 resource- and energy-saving proposals from our worldwide network of suppliers. We share the best proposals with all suppliers at Excellent Partners meetings, which are attended by suppliers in Japan and from overseas.

In the future, we will extend ECO-VC activities across the entire supply chain around the world. We will also promote globally measures to lower CO₂ emissions, reduce costs, and advance recycling-oriented manufacturing (including minimized resource use, increased recycling, and switching to non-petroleumbased materials).

1VC: Value Creation

[Breakdown of ECO-VC Activities Proposed by Suppliers (Year Ended March 2012)]

[Results of Proposed Themes for Each ECO/VC Activity (Environment)]

	FY2011	FY2012
No. of proposals	668	901
CO2 reductions derived from proposals	163,000 tons	323,000 tons
Use of recycled resources derived from proposals	11,612 tons	16,521 tons
Reduction in resources used derived from proposals	12,311 tons	16,231 tons

Initiatives in Green Logistics

Panasonic has worked to shift from trucks to rail transport (modal shift), use more echo cars and biodiesel fuels, and improve the loading ratio through joint transport with other companies in order to reduce CO₂ emissions from logistics. Through these activities, CO2 emissions from logistics in the fiscal 2012 ended March 2012 totaled 1.06 million tons.

Working with the Asahi Shimbun Company and Asahi Industry Co., Ltd., we began in fiscal 2011 using empty space on newspaperdelivery vehicles to transport our cargo, reducing trips by empty vehicles and boosting transport efficiency. Creating a return transportation model between two very different industries, along with our use of low emission and alternative-fuel vehicles, has helped us to reduce CO₂ emissions by 55 percent.

Outside of Japan, we are also promoting less CO₂-intensive marine transportation to cross rivers over using truck transport. For example, in Brazil, for long-range transport of goods from Manaus in the inland to the southern city of Sao Paulo, we grew our year-on-year use of marine transportation over the same route by 20 percent in fiscal 2012, resulting in a 7 percent reduction in CO₂ emissions.

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