Environmental Governance/ System of promotion

It is the responsibility of our Corporate Environmental Affairs Division to develop environmental strategies based on the policies adopted at our Management Conferences and by the Environmental Working Committee, to support group-wide environmental programs, and to ensure that individual business domain companies implement them. To address specific problems through group-wide action, the Division also establishes various environmental committees, subcommittees, and working groups (with members comprising environmental staff from the major business domain companies). In March 2007, the Factor 5 Project Committee, which was established as an advisory body to the Environmental Working Committee, was dissolved as it had successfully achieved its targets.

In April 2008, we established the Corporate CO₂ Emission Reduction Promoting Committee and have since been making concerted efforts to reduce CO₂ emissions from all our business activities.

In response to specific environmental regulations in particular countries, we have also established Regional Environmental Conferences, where discussions are held on problems unique to respective regions.

We regard environmental sustainability management as one of our management priorities, and in order to develop human resources who have a keen ability to support our environmental activities, we have clearly defined the role and position of employees who are to be engaged in environmental issues, and formulated clear policies on their education. We have been implementing measures to improve the skills of these employees and develop them into environmental specialists.

In April 2006, ahead of other Japanese manufacturers, we introduced our in-house skills evaluation system company-wide. Subsequently, in fiscal 2008, we reexamined the criteria for our in-house environmental specialists. As a result, we revised the criteria on their technical skills to clearly show the targets for skills that the environmental specialist should achieve.

In the future, we will significantly improve the productivity of our environmental specialists and help them achieve their individual targets.

Panasonic is promoting environmental management systems on two levels: on a group-wide inter-domain level and on the level of individual business domain companies/business sites. Individual business domain companies and business sites operate environmental management systems for which they have gained ISO 14001 certification. For the implementation of the PDCA cycle for environmental sustainability management, it is essential to collect accurate data on energy consumption, waste generation, and use of chemical substances by each business site in a timely manner. To this end, Panasonic has developed and introduced an environmental performance system to globally manage its environmental data in an efficient manner.

In the past, this system was mainly used for collecting and managing environmental data. Furthermore in fiscal 2008, we started collecting data from 297 manufacturing sites all over the world and evaluating the monthly environmental performance for each domain company and business site using this system.

Specifically, we collect major environmental impact data, including that related to energy consumption, waste generation, release and transfer of chemical substances, and water consumption, plus data on environmental impact reduction results, from each of our manufacturing sites, analyze the data, and give feedback on their environmental performance (progress and problems) to the sites, thereby helping them strengthen the implementation of PDCA cycles in their environmental sustainable management.

By the end of 1998, Panasonic had obtained ISO 14001 certification for every one of its manufacturing sites worldwide. Due to business integration, consolidation of business bases, and promotion of multi-site certification, the number of our ISO-certified sites varies every year.

• * As of March 2008 / Including multi-site certification

In fiscal 2002, we established a new system to evaluate the environmental sustainability management level of our individual business domain companies. Under this system, each business domain company voluntarily evaluates its own performance against achievement levels set forth for green products and clean factories in the Green Plan 2010. The results are then incorporated into the business evaluations of domain companies and utilized as an indicator for inspecting and improving environmental sustainable management. In fiscal 2009 onwards, we will focus on the Target Achievement Rate for Super GPs in our Green Product rating and will replace the "energyconservation rate" with "CO₂ emissions reduction" in the criteria for our Clean Factory ratings.

• *1 Target achievement rate for the number of models to be accredited as Super GPs set for each of the business domain companies.
• *2 Target achievement rate for the amount of CO₂ emissions set for each of the business domain companies.
• *3 Performance against the achievement targets will be evaluated. (Full points will be given if the criteria are met.)