Environmental Accounting | Environmental Management | Environmental Activities | Environmental & Social Activities

To promote environmental conservation activities efficiently and effectively, the Sanyo Group introduced environmental accounting in fiscal 1998 as part of its environmental management. Through practicing it, Sanyo uniformly manages its environmental conservation activity performance to help improve activity contents and efficiency.

Environmental conservation costs (based on the Environmental Accounting Guidelines by the Ministry of the Environment)
Investment amount: amount of expenditure intended for environmental conservation
Expense: costs of labor intended for environmental conservation and depreciation expenses related to investments in environmental conservation
Environmental conservation effects
Direct effects: the effects which have direct impact on the environment and which can be converted directly into a monetary sum
Environmental conservation indicators: calculation of environmental conservation achievements that are thought to have significant effect on the environment
Period of survey: April 2008 to March 2009
Scope of survey: 103 domestic and overseas related companies of the Sanyo group with ISO14001 certification (52 companies in Japan and 51 overseas)

The fiscal 2008 environmental conservation cost was 24,809 million yen, and investment was 5,762 million yen. The cost amount has stayed much the same since fiscal 2007, while the investment amount increased 26%. In addition to R&D costs for environmentally conscious products, the main portion of the cost amount is the pollution prevention cost, including expenses for the installation of exhaust gas treatment facilities and maintenance of wastewater plants. The main cause for the increase in the investment amount was R&D investment relating to hybrid vehicle batteries, and investment in pollution reduction equipment arising from increased investment in solar cell manufacturing plants.

■Environmental Conservation Cost (Upper: The Sanyo Group/Lower: SANYO Electric Co., Ltd.)

(million yen)
Item	Main contents	Investment	Expense
1. Pollution prevention	Installation of exhaust gas treatment facilities and maintenance of wastewater plant	1,339 662	3,144 1,659
2. Global environmental conservation	Maintenance of cogeneration systems	943 382	2,185 1,554
3. Resource circulation	Waste disposal	347 141	2,508 885
4. Upstream/Downstream	Outsourcing of recycling	56 11	685 189
5. Administration	Maintenance and operation of environmental management systems	164 154	2,205 1,162
6. R&D	Research and development for environmentally-conscious products	2,855 2,430	13,584 10,398
7. Social activities	Solar Ark programs	23 19	256 133
8. Environmental remediation	Groundwater purification	35 35	242 232
	Total	5,762 3,834	24,809 16,211

■Breakdown of Environmental Conservation Costs (Expenses)

The fiscal 2008 environmental conservation effect was a direct effect of 11,293 million yen, which represented a 25% rise from fiscal 2007. The main cause for the increase was a reduction in the amount of materials used due to improvements in efficiency for the battery manufacturing process.

■Environmental Conservation Effect (Upper: The Sanyo Group/Lower: SANYO Electric Co., Ltd.)

(million yen)
Item		Main contents	Monetary effect
Direct effects	1. Energy conservation	Reducing energy consumption through the introduction of electricity saving equipment	982 122
	2. Resource conservation	Reduction of chemical usage	3,958 3,784
	3. Reduction in waste disposal cost	Reduction of emissions of industrial waste	264 73
	4. Income from used paper collection	Sales of used paper	22 1
	5. Environment-related business activities	Environmental analysis	28 24
	6. Profit from selling valuables related to waste disposal and recycling	Profits on sale of scrap	6,039 3,703
	Total of direct effects		11,293 7,708
Indirect effects	1. Environmental education effect	Reduction of external training costs by using internal training	59 14
	2. EMS construction effect		36 2
	3. Reduction in payment of non-installment-type insurance premiums		1 0
	4. Improvement in operation rate and loss avoidance through accident prevention	Accident prevention measures	28 0
	5. Avoidance of remediation by preventing pollution	Preventing pollution outflow using groundwater purification equipment	511 510
	6. Reduction in payment for compensation, etc.		1 0
	7. Inserts on newspapers	PR activities involving articles on Sanyo’s environmental products and initiatives	49 39
	8. TV coverage	Featuring solar products	7 3
	9. Access to environmental web site		85 84
	10. Writing environment-related research papers, award money, and lecture presentation		0 0
	11. CO₂ reduction effect	Introduction of electricity saving equipment	69 1
	12. Energy and resource conservation effects of environmentally-conscious quality products sold	Reducing energy consumption by customers through the sales of environmentally-conscious quality products	6,312 6,183
	13. Effects on reduction of chemical substance with environmental impact of environmentally-conscious quality products sold	Reducing environmental risk by selling environmentally-conscious quality products	3,518 0
	Total of indirect effects		10,677 6,836
	Total effects		21,970 14,544

Calculation Method of Indirect Effects

■Breakdown of Environmental Conservation Effects (Direct Effects)