Mitsubishi Electric's 5th Environmental Plan contains policies for preventing environmental accidents before they occur; specifically, by promptly replacing obsolete facilities and practicing preventive maintenance through sites inspecting one another.
With respect to promptly replacing obsolete facilities, we are conducting surveys of facilities at least ten years old and are replacing them in a scheduled manner.
In terms of practicing preventive maintenance through sites inspecting one another, we have set up an investigative committee to look into eco-factory and eco-office evaluation methods, and we have formulated indicators to quantify potential environmental risks at each business site for different environment-related areas. We will quantitatively assess potential risks and risk reduction initiatives depending on the type of environmental impact. We will clarify the amount of risk remaining for each item through comparison with established eco-factory standards and specify areas requiring improvement. Moreover, we plan to expedite the early prevention of risk by widely sharing information on these initiatives.
Assessment Indicators for Environmental Risk
There are a variety of environmental activities taking place at our business sites, but for the sake of creating indicators we have broadly classified them into the following three categories.
1) Cross-sectoral systems (systems, mechanisms, etc.)
2) Environmental risks (subdivided by environmental impact)
3) Environmental contributions (external, internal)
At business offices, we have placed heavy emphasis on cross-sectoral systems and environmental contributions, and for environmental risks we have decided to primarily evaluate issues pertaining to waste products and global warming. The assessment indicators we've created will be reviewed every year and will be added to, revised or eliminated in line with prevailing conditions. The indicators are aimed at making environmental risks more transparent.
We inspect and check PCB waste being stored by the company as well as devices in use that contain PCBs at least once per year at each storage site.
In fiscal 2007, we concluded an agreement with the Japan Environmental Safety Corporation (JESCO), a fully owned government organization that processes PCB waste under the supervision of the government. Our goal is to complete PCB processing by 2011 while continuing to appropriately store and manage it until that time.
With respect to the chance that small amounts of PCB have contaminated transformers and other devices, Mitsubishi Electric has considered the possibilities of contamination during the manufacturing process, contamination after the devices have been delivered, contamination through insulating oil and other scenarios, but it has not been possible to identify the causes, devices involved or time of manufacture. We have therefore concluded that we cannot deny the possibility that small amounts of PCBs could have contaminated electrical devices manufactured prior to 1989 using electrical insulating oil. Quality management for insulating oil has been strengthened for devices manufactured since 1990, so we have judged that there has been no contamination by low-concentration PCBs as of product shipment.
Along with continuing to manage quality for insulating oil, we are working to provide technical information via our website and are responding to individual inquiries via a customer service desk already in place.
As of September 2006, we have completed the process of finding alternative substances for Mitsubishi Electric products that had contained asbestos in the past. We have also taken other measures to deal with the problem, including eliminating inventory containing asbestos.
