The Nissui Group has set CO2 emission, water usage and waste production as three important benchmarks for its efforts to reduce environmental impact. In the past, targets were set and progress was monitored in 3-year intervals but we have recently set new medium- to long-term targets for Nissui and its domestic Group companies. We are committed to contribute to the various visions of sustainability proposed on a global level including the SDGs, the Paris Agreement and the realization of a recycling-based society.
Medium- to long-term environmental impact reduction targets (Compared to fiscal 2015)
| Environmental benchmarks | Scope | 3-year targets (to fiscal 2018) | Medium-term targets (to fiscal 2023) |
Long-term targets (to fiscal 2030) |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Results of progress in fiscal 2017 | |||||
| CO2 | Nissui and its domestic Group companies | Reduction of 2% (total) | Reduction of 2% (total) | Reduction of 10% (Per unit) | Reduction of 15% (Per unit) |
| Water | Reduction of 1% (total) | Reduction of 0.6% (total) | Reduction of 10% (Per unit) | - | |
| Waste |
(i) Reduction of 3% (total) |
(i) Increase of 25.1%(Note) (ii) Plants achieved- |
(i) Reduction of 5% (Per unit) (ii) Zero emission Raise the percentage of plants with 99% or higher zero emission rate to 75% |
Raise the percentage of plants with 99% or higher zero emission rate to 100% | |
| HCFC(HFC) leakage level | Nippon Suisan Kaisha, Ltd. (Nissui) | - | - | Less than 1,000 tons-CO2 | - |
Note: Due to the unexpected increase in sludge. However, nearly the total volume of increase has been recycled.
The Kansai Eco-office Awards are a prize to recognize registered offices that are making exceptional efforts to save energy. Nissui’s Himeji General Plant launched an Eco-Promotion Team, which plans eco-promotion activities where employees take an active part, and follows up by implementing those initiatives. These include “ecoxercise,” a portmanteau of “eco” and “exercise,” where employees are urged to use the stairs instead of elevators, or a contest that encourages employees to design “eco-art” posters. We publicize these measures both within and outside the company to great acclaim, which led to our receiving the prize.
The package of Nissui’s fish sausage use “eco-clips®” instead of the conventional metal stops. Using “eco-clips®” reduces the use of aluminum by 120 tons per year and also leads to the proper sorting of trash once the fish sausages are consumed. Additionally, the “Meku-tape (peel-off tape)” currently being used in products with “eco-clips®” allows the fish sausage to be opened without using sharp objects such as scissors and to be consumed more safely and conveniently.
The “Shizenkai to-de-oishii” series of frozen prepared foods, which can be packed into lunch boxes straight out of the freezer, are energy-saving frozen foods because they do not require reheating in the microwave. The “Shizenkaito-de-oishii” frozen prepared food series won the Excellence Award for Energy Saving Product of the Eco-Products Award in 2012, and has long been popular as products that makes eco-food preparation possible.
The inhouse project to shift to lightweight packaging materials has been reviewing containers and packaging of the core products in precooked frozen foods for household use and processed foods for household use, which is indispensable for promoting 3R efforts for a recycling-based society. In fiscal 2017, Nissui successfully shortened the width of the exterior packaging film of eight items of precooked frozen foods for household use by 10mm, thereby reducing the weight of the film by 0.14g per film. As a result, the plastic containers have been reduced by 3,395.9kg per year.
Reducing Methane Emissions through Biomass Electricity Generation In fiscal 2018, an anaerobic ozone processing facility was introduced as part of the waste water treatment process at the Hachioji General Plant to augment its existing enzymatic waste water treatment facility. However, the waste water treatment process in the new facility produced methane gas which had a far greater greenhouse effect than CO2. Consequently, Nissui decided to start biomass electricity generation, which collects methane gas produced in the treatment process and burns it in the electricity-producing generators , concurrently with the new waste water treatment process. As a result, value was added to the waste water treatment process as well as preventing further global warming through the emission of methane gas into the atmosphere. This reduction in methane gas is expected to result in the reduction of CO2 emission by 2,380 tons per year.
Biomass Electricity Generation at the Hachioji General Plant
Since beginning operations in January 2018, surplus oil produced when manufacturing products has been used to fuel the plant’s boilers. This effort will lessen CO2 emissions as compared to using city gas.
Boiler at the Kashima Pharmaceutical Plant
At the Tsukuba Plant, functional lipids, EPA and DHA are refined as functional materials intended for the domestic and overseas markets, and in this process, white soil is used to absorb the pigments of these fish oils. Previously, the used white soil had been commissioned to cement plants to be processed as industrial waste (sludge) but starting from fiscal 2018, Nissui has started marketing shipments of this used soil as conditioning agents to regulate moisture in composts for stock farms. After safety checks including checks for any pollutants, a total volume of approximately 200 ton per year of used white soil will be shipped. The Tsukuba Plant considers this initiative to be a sustainable activity to reduce waste.
Gorton’s, Inc., Nissui’s overseas group company, is engaged in the manufacturing of precooked frozen seafood products in the historic port town of Gloucester, Massachusetts, US. In 2018, Gorton’s collaborated with its business partner, Americold, a cold storage and warehousing company, in initiatives to reduce CO2 emission. Using Americold’s ammonia compressors, ammonia refrigerant (Note) was supplied to freezers of both Gorton’s and Americold, resulting in an annual electricity reduction of over 500,000 kwh per year, the equivalent of powering over 50 homes a year. This also resulted in massive cost reductions for both Gorton’s and Americold, and showed the way to teaming up with business partners in order to achieve significant goals in reducing the environmental impact .
(Note) Ammonia refrigerant: While ammonia refrigerant has a high calorific value, it requires strict management because of its toxicity and combustibility.
