Environmental Education

To develop, manufacture, and market environmentallyconscious products, it is necessary for manufacturers to make their employees aware of the impacts that they have on the environment in their manufacturing activities, including the lifecycle environmental impact of their products. In order to foster employee“s environmental awareness, Panasonic has developed a wide-ranging environmental education system.

We will provide even better environmental training to employees to further improve their abilities.

Using our extensive environmental education system, we provide our employees with general education on the environmental sustainability management-related knowledge required in their daily business operations, and also professional education to provide them with the specific environmental knowledge required in their individual jobs.

In response to increasing demand for implementing global environmental measures, we hold special seminars on the environment in the training sessions held for employees to be dispatched outside Japan. These seminars are held seven times a year. In fiscal 2008, 299 employees attended these seminars, with a total of 1,132 employees having attended them since 2004.

In fiscal 2004, we launched a systematic and effective environmental education program using our e-learning system in Japan. In fiscal 2008, we expanded the items to be taught in the program by adding ”green purchasing”and ”appropriate management of chemical substances” to ”general environmental knowledge” and ”initiatives taken by Panasonic and its group subsidiaries.” Items other than ”initiatives taken by Panasonic and its group subsidiaries”are optional, and employees must pass tests associated with the respective sections of the textbook to complete this program. We have also produced CD-ROMs with the same content for use in collective education provided at our manufacturing sites. Some domain companies and business sites independently provide their own general environmental education with regard to the contents of the program.

Panasonic also provides professional education on the environment. We have been fostering the development of environmental specialists based on our guidelines for their education, definitions of environmental duties, and on the skills to be acquired and strengthened by employees wishing to take up such opportunities.

In fiscal 2008, as in the previous fiscal year, we held an environmental sustainable management seminar. In professional education, learning lessons from the activities conducted in the previous fiscal year, we expanded the content of the seminars on energy conservation and environmental laws and regulations and also for the basic seminar on Green Products. In addition, we launched a special seminar on risk management in China as a means of enhancing the global environmental abilities of employees.