Sanpo-yoshi Communication
Sanpo-yoshi Communication
President's Column] Carbon Offsetting
At the end of last year, the government announced that it would ban the sale of new gasoline-powered cars in the first half of 2030; it appears that the EU and other countries will move this up a bit more. Since the beginning of the year, the Nikkei newspaper has been running a very large feature article entitled "Carbon Zero: The Fourth Revolution," and the momentum for "carbon zero" has been growing rapidly.
Personally, I have my doubts about the causal relationship between carbon dioxide and global warming, but I believe that, both politically and internationally, the push for carbon neutrality is unstoppable.
As a company, it is only natural that we are expected to make our own efforts—such as reducing gasoline and electricity consumption as much as possible, recycling as much waste as possible, and purchasing raw materials with the lowest possible environmental impact.
In addition, it appears that generating solar power on-site or purchasing renewable electricity from power companies will become essential. Furthermore, the prevailing trend has been to offset CO2 emissions that cannot be reduced by purchasing emission credits.
Since a competition has begun—primarily among major corporations—to highlight CO2 reduction efforts in their CSR reports, I believe that minimizing CO2 emissions in our own operations, disclosing them with appropriate evidence, and promoting these efforts will become a key priority if we are to be selected as a supplier by large companies.
Since last year, our company has been promoting paper made from wood sourced from properly managed forests (FSC-certified paper), and many companies have already adopted it. We have also been working to convert waste from label base paper into RPF (refuse-derived fuel), which has resulted in a certain degree of reduction in waste.
We are currently working to reduce energy consumption by replacing the UV drying lamps on our printing presses—which are highly energy-intensive—with LED lamps. In addition, we have begun negotiations with Kyushu Electric Power to purchase a portion of our electricity from renewable energy sources. We are also making preparations to purchase emission credits from a project in our local city of Kurume.
We will continue to strive to become a company where, in the future, simply purchasing printed materials from us will contribute to reducing CO2 emissions.