Action Guidelines for Environmental Conservation
Global environmental conservation is an important issue shared by all humanity, and Hitachi Construction Machinery Group is working on the actualization of a sustainable society which exists in harmony with the environment as one of the top management priorities, not only following legal regulations, but also taking part in regular disclosure of information and active communication with stakeholders.
Hitachi Construction Machinery Group, in addition to constructing a structure which allows environmental management strategies to be promptly and reliably carried out with success, launched the Environment Policy Division in 1991 as a cross-group organization, with the aim of promoting organized environmental conservation activities within the Group as a whole. In April 2019, the former Environment Policy Division and the former CSR Promotion Department were integrated to form the “Sustainability Promotion Group” as an organization directly reporting to the President and Executive Officer.
In terms of environmental management, we have newly established Sustainability Promotion Group, which is responsible for the integrated management and promotion of environmental, social and governance initiatives throughout the entire group, and providing appropriate disclosure. Meetings of the Sustainability Promotion Committee held twice annually with members made up of Executive Officers including the President deliberate and authorize ESG-related issues involving management decisions such as responses to climate change.
With respect to environmental risks, we recognize risks relating to climate change in particular as crucial management issues, and so to minimize effects on climate change, we are systematically working to increase the popularization of even more improved energy-saving functionality as well as low-carbon products (hybrids/electric motors/batteries) and IoT technology as a means to effectively restrict CO2 during product use, which makes up 90% of a product life cycle.
Furthermore, on the matter of environmental burden, we regularly carry out inspections and monitoring of effects to the environment which arise from business activities, and make an effort to restrict them.
Action Guidelines
- Global environmental conservation is a critical challenge shared by all humans. We are committed, therefore, to fulfilling our responsibilities by assisting in the realization of an environmentally harmonious and sustainable society as one of our management priorities.
- We will make efforts to contribute to society by developing highly reliable technologies and production processes while accurately understanding the needs related to the prevention of global warming, conservation of resources, and preservation of the ecosystem.
- 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.
- We will promote globally applicable business activities with the aim of understanding and reducing environmental burdens at every stage, including product research and development, design, production, distribution, usage, and final disposal.
- We will investigate and review the environmental impact caused in the course of our business processes. We will also introduce excellent technologies and materials useful to safeguard the environment, in other words, to reduce environmental burdens through energy and resource saving, recycling, chemical substance management, consideration for the ecosystem, and other measures.
- Our 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 business activities, impact on the local environment and community are to be considered. In addition, measures that meet local communities’ requests should be implemented.
- We will educate our employees to take action in order to obey environment-related laws, raise their global environmental awareness, look upon society from a wide point of view, and from a broad vantage point encourage their interest in environmental conservation.
- We will evaluate potential environmental problems and prevent them from occurring. In the event that any environmental problem occurs, we will take appropriate measures to minimize the environmental burden.
- We will make efforts to disclose information on our environmental conservation activities to our relevant stakeholders. We will also actively communicate with these stakeholders so as to strengthen mutual understanding and forge cooperative relationships with them.
Notes
Article Five of resource conservation is about proactively promoting the three R’s (reduce, reuse, recycle) while putting a focus on production locations, the minimization through the effective use of resources taken from nature during business activities, achieving reductions in waste by reusing and recycling, and reducing the quantity of water used in business activities. Furthermore, it means the management of chemical substances and consideration for ecosystems which requires reductions in the use of chemical substances and the quantity of atmospheric emissions, both of which result in harmful waste which has a significant impact on the environment, is leading to successfully switching to low-GWP freon/non-freon instruments etc., as well as continuing appropriate maintenance and management of waste-water resulting from operations with the goal of preventing water contamination.
