Sustainability is a matter of life or death to companies.
Without steady assessment,
it becomes difficult to keep
existing in the society.
The recent social situation shows that the environment-related words such as decarbonization and circular economy are naturally used. Looking to the individual business and considering the company-wide status, no one can do without thinking of the impact derived from these phenomena. As one of the representations, we see 'SDGs Song' run on TV. Of course SDGs is a sustainable development goal which has 17 goals established by the United Nations in 2015, and it may become common knowledge of younger generation in the future since it has been penetrated in the society including school education.
Chemical industry which consumes much energy and has mass production of plastics is given a strong impact by the energy or plastics. In such circumstances, how should we consider the impact that the overall business and organization give to the society? Thus far we needed to think about only our own business, but we are required now to think what type of impact is generated in our products, all the value chains of services, or the whole parts of life cycles. If not, our customers or the society may say 'No' in the end. Considering it as a company, we have become to be asked by our shareholders and investors what the items except of the financial factors (recently called ESG) are like. It is essential that we think about it when turning our eyes to the potfolio aspects such as how business changes in the long term or what should be done, because the sustainable elements have come to move the society.
I initially got involved with technology development for manufacturing chemicals. When the century turned to a new era, I reached the concept that what is important is not 'how to make things', but 'how to use things' without a burden owed to the planet and the innovation for the form of the society for less burden. Since then I have been engaged in LCA, 'Assessment to think the environmental impact on total lifecycles of things'. I currently face the present significant issues including decarbonization, circular economy, waste plastics issues through the assessment method as a sustanability expert. Many initiatives are making movements for these significant issues on the global stage, and among them I feel the rising importance on what the competitiveness of our products is like, and how the propriety should be asserted in proposal of the solutions.
Unity of holistic viewpoint and specific viewpoint' is important.
Direction based on the overview and
deeper search of individual assessment
are required.
Environmental impact is assessed in LCA, and nowadays it is necessary not only to think about the environment but about the impact on social aspects. For example, there are human rights issues, concern to labor environments, nurture of people, and so on. Also, in case of biodiversity, we need to have a way of thinking that companies depend on the environment while they give impact to the environment. In this way the objective spheres keep changing all the time, and new global standards that are specific to the spheres are being proposed.
For instance, we need to think based on the globally dominating trend such as TCFD*1 and SBT*2. Further, the cutting-edge solution technology is developed by various companies, and analyzed and compared by lots of organizations such as IEA*3 or ICEF*4 , and such information is piled up massively on daily basis. People who promote development and business run after the updated information, yet I guess the information is not sufficiently used. Then, if such information is combined with the holistic information and deeper assessment we provide for determination, further benefits can be expected.
It is important to combine the holistic viewpoint such as sustainability of the society and its overall system with the specific viewpoint for individual technology and solution for each phenomenon. This leads to a view for innovative business model strategy and the individual strategies including eco-friendly designing. The world is changing quickly and with the movement to shift to the service of MaaS*5, the macufacturing industry is in a very tough period. We hope that we will help the people with our specific viewpoint for technology and knowledges for general information, namely, the strength of MCR, in various scenes.
- TCFD: Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures
- SBT: Science Based Targets (Greenhouse Gas emission reduction target which accords with the standard required by the Paris Agreement (Aiming to restrain the increase of the global temperature to the level, 'Well below 2℃', compared to the pre-Industrial Revolution period, and also to 1.5℃'), and aims to be attained in 5 to 15 years.)
- IEA: International Energy Agency
- ICEF: Innovation for Cool Earth Forum (Conference to aim to discuss the measures for climate change by technological innovation)
- MaaS: Mobility as a Service (Next generation's traffic service in which technologies including automated driving and AI are mixed and integrated with the existing traffic methods)
