In order to reduce environmental impact, the Sanyo Group conducts product assessment (preliminary environmental assessment of products) at the design and prototyping stages for all products of Sanyo, including household products, industrial products, and components.
To enable more detailed analysis and accordingly more accurate product assessment, Sanyo uses quantitative analysis, instead of conventionally-used qualitative analysis, as much as possible to indicate the results for each item in numeric terms. For each year, targets are set for the respective product groups and achievement of these targets is specified as a requirement for environmentally-conscious designing.
Up until fiscal 2006, as a rule, products subject to assessment were limited to products manufactured in Japan and those sold in Japan. As of fiscal 2007, this scope was expanded to all products manufactured and sold worldwide. In addition, during fiscal 2007 and fiscal 2008, Sanyo held in-house seminars regarding product assessment and easy-to-recycle designing, primarily for product designers at major manufacturing facilities.

• Reduction of weight/volume
• Use of recycled materials and parts
• Improvement on possibility of recycled materials, etc.
• Promotion on long term use
• Ease of collection/transportation
• Ease of manual disassembling/separating process
• Ease of shredding/separation process
• Packaging
• Safety
• Environmental protection
• Conservation of energy and resources at use phase
• Distribution of Information
• Reduction of environmental impacts in production phase


The following items apply to appropriate products:
• Standby power consumption
• Recycling of portable rechargeable batteries

In environmentally-conscious design creation, one of the important themes is reduction of materials used, product/packaging volume, and product weight. Sanyo addresses this as one of its product assessment evaluation items (mentioned above).
For example, Sanyo developed a gas heat pump air conditioner model (SGP-H560M1G etc.) weighing 800 kg, which is 110 kg (12%) lighter compared to the same-type already available 910 kg model and is the lightest among all the models of the same class in the industry^*1. This was made possible through utilization of aluminum materials and a thoroughgoing structure/material review.
Further, Sanyo realized the industry's smallest in size and lightest in weight for its rotary 2-stage compressor model using natural refrigerant CO₂ (C-CV153HOU etc.)^*2.

*1 As of August 2007 (Source: Sanyo's internal data)

*2 As of January 2008 (Source: Sanyo's internal data)

Drum-type washer/dryer
AWD-AQ3000

To facilitate proper treatment of used equipment, the Sanyo Group strives to design products that can be easily recycled. In addition to holding "Recycling School" on a regular basis to provide engineers with on-site study experience at a recycling plant, in April 2007 the "Guidelines for Designing Easily-Recyclable Products"*3 was issued, in which important points in designing products are organized by following the equipment disassembly process.
Practically, for drum-type washing/drying machines, which tend to be more difficult to recycle compared to standard automatic washing machines due to their complicated structure with many parts, structural review was conducted to increase ease of disassembly.

*3 "Guidelines for Designing Easily-Recyclable Products" is a reference book for product designers, which was organized based on the opinions and views collected from recycling plant workers and Recycling School participants.

• Recycling School for Engineers

To facilitate drum-type washer/dryer recycling:

1. All the top-panel fixing screws, which had been inserted from different angles, are now inserted in one uniform direction to improve the efficiency of product disassembly work (Fig. 1);
2. The number of screws used to assemble a door has been reduced to 17 from the 19 for conventional models and the number of screws on the door cover has also been reduced to 2 from the 8 for conventional models;
3. To facilitate door dismounting, a hook has been included in the door mounting hardware. This enables safe dismounting of a door without holding it. In addition, door mounting parts are made to be commonly usable for both a right-hand and left-hand door (Fig. 2); and
4. Through efforts to reduce weight and volume, thermoplastic resin usage was reduced by approximately 3 kg (approx. 4%) compared to conventional models. For packaging materials, styrofoam usage was reduced by 118 g (approx. 17%) to 582 g (Fig. 3).

■Fig. 1
Top-panel Fixing Screws Now Inserted in Same Direction

■Fig. 2
Structure of Door Mounting Part

（Unit：g）

Part Name	Conventional Models	AWD-AQ3000	Amount Reduced	Remark
Top panel	1,445	1,100	345	No. of parts reduced to 1 from 2
Door	600	282	318	Structural change
Feet	3,968	2,905	1,063	Smaller feet used

Plastic usage reduced by approximately 3 kg

through structural change, elimination of parts etc.

The Sanyo Group actively promotes "closed recycling" and use of plastic material recovered from used home appliances in new plastic parts. Specifically, we use plastic material (polypropylene) recovered from the vegetable compartments of refrigerators for parts such as refrigerator evaporation trays and rails as well as air-conditioner fan guards. In fiscal 2008, the amount rose substantially to 327 tons, as a result of an increasing shift towards the use of recycled plastic. Sanyo will continue working to increase the amount and types of its parts made from recycled plastic.

At the Sanyo Group, to promote the recycling of plastic parts, we make it a general rule to display the materials used for parts that weigh 25g or more, as well as the additives used to improve the characteristics of plastics. In addition, we are also promoting unification of material types and reduction of composite material.