Environmental Performance
Recycling End-of-Life Products
Recycling Four Kinds of Home Appliances
Dismantling products at Hyper Cycle Systems
Two years prior to the April 2001 when Law for the Recycling of Specified Kinds of Home Appliances (Home Appliance Recycling Law) was enforced in Japan, in 1999 Mitsubishi Electric became the first in the industry to operate end-of-life appliances recycling plant, Hyper Cycle Systems Co., Ltd, and recycle not only air conditioners, television sets, refrigerators/freezers and washing machines (the four kinds of home appliances), but also office equipment and other items.
Hyper Cycle Systems has recycled approximately 295,000 tons (as of March 2007). Information on dismantling and sorting obtained through this process has been communicated back to product design divisions to improve recycling ratios.
In addition, Mitsubishi Electric has joined with five other home appliance manufacturers*1 to establish recycling plants in 16 locations nationwide. The companies work together to recycle end-of-life home appliances. In fiscal 2007, Mitsubishi Electric recycled 1.06 million units of the four kinds of home appliances (98% of the previous year's level) and had a recycling ratio of 78%.
*1: Fujitsu General, Hitachi Appliances, Sanyo Electric, Sharp and Sony.
Recycling Personal Computers
In compliance with the Law for the Promotion of Effective Utilization of Resources (amended Recycling Law), we have recycled used industrial-use computers since April 2001, and used domestic use computers since October 2003. In fiscal 2007, we collected a total of 10,682 computers, which represented a recycling rate of 74%.
Mitsubishi Electric established the Information Device Recycling Center to take inquiries and applications for collection and recycling. Collected used Computers are sent to Hyper Cycle Systems, or other recycling plants established jointly by electric appliance manufacturers, for dismantling and sorting. We work to recycle resources under a management organization that lends transparency to the processing flow from collection to recycling by a web-based system.
We have the risk of leak of data in the hard disk drives of disposed computers. Computer users have basically the responsibilities to prevent the data leak, though the companies we have contracted to recycle computers punch holes in the hard disk drives or use a strong magnet to destroy any data physically and magnetically, in order to prevent the secret data from leaking out. Interested computer owners can also pay for a program to delete all data completely before their used computer are taken away.
| Unit | Air Conditioners | Televisions | Refrigerators/ Freezers | Washing Machines | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Units received at designated collection points | 1,000 units | 243 | 304 | 321 | 191 | 1,059 |
| Units processed | 1,000 units | 244 | 302 | 321 | 191 | 1,058 |
| Weight processed | Tons | 10,111 | 8,477 | 18,192 | 6,022 | 42,802 |
| Weight reused in products | Tons | 8,861 | 6,456 | 13,172 | 4,850 | 33,339 |
| Ratio reused in products | % | 87 | 74 | 72 | 80 | - |
| Unit | Desktop | Notebooks | CRT Displays | LCD Displays | Total | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Collected | Tons | 62.4 | 7.6 | 82 | 8.7 | 160.7 | |||||
| Office 55.9 |
Home 6.6 |
Office 7.3 |
Home 0.3 |
Office 79.5 |
Home 2.6 |
Office 8.7 |
Home 0 |
Office 151.4 |
Home 9.5 |
||
| Units collected | Unit | 4,163 | 1,756 | 3,533 | 1,230 | 10,682 | |||||
| Office 3,726 |
Home 437 |
Office 1,690 |
Home 66 |
Office 3,422 |
Home 111 |
Office 1,225 |
Home 5 |
Office 1,0063 |
Home 619 |
||
| Weight recycled | Tons | 62.4 | 7.6 | 82 | 8.7 | 160.7 | |||||
| Weight reused | Tons | 48.8 | 4.7 | 58.8 | 6.7 | 119 | |||||
| Ratio of reuse and material recycling | % | 78.1 | 61.6 | 71.7 | 76.7 | - | |||||
Figures for office computers are combined figures for Mitsubishi Electric Information Technology Corp., NEC Display Solutions Ltd. and Mitsubishi Electric Corp.
Figures for home computers are figures from Mitsubishi Electric Information Technology Corp.
