Endeavor to create a circular economy
Management System
Basic Approach
As the world’s population grows and global economic activities become more active, including in developing and emerging countries, conventional linear economic activities based on mass consumption and disposal of resources pose a major threat because they cross the planetary boundaries. In addition, the waste problem is becoming more serious due to improper waste management, resulting in the loss of natural capital. Under these circumstances, the entire society is expected to work together to shift to a circular economy that enhances environmental and social sustainability by decoupling resource use and economic growth.
Through its supply of chemicals and highly functional plastic products, the Mitsui Chemicals Group has contributed to improving convenience in people’s lives and helped to solve social challenges by, for example, improving energy efficiency and reducing food loss. At the same time, our business activities require the substantial use of fossil resources and energy, which emits large volumes of greenhouse gases (GHGs). Also, in recent years there is growing concern over environmental pollution caused by plastic waste that has leaked into the oceans. The Group believes that these climate change issues cannot be separated from the massive consumption and disposal of plastic resources and leakage of plastic waste (hereinafter “plastic waste problem”) and they must be addressed as a single issue.
By introducing the perspective of life cycle assessment, the Group will help create a circular economy for the entire product life cycle, from development, manufacturing, distribution, usage, recycling, and final consumption to disposal.
System & Responsible Officers
We have appointed the officer in charge of the Corporate Sustainability Committee to take charge of addressing climate change and plastic waste problems as ESG-related problems mentioned in the SDGs. The committee reviews Group-wide policies, strategies, and plans. The deliberation results are then reported to the Management Committee. The agendas are then, as necessary, discussed by the Group-wide Strategy Committee meetings and deliberated by the Management Committee. The Board of Directors then finalizes the agendas and monitors them.
In FY2022, we have established a new system called Circular Economy Center of Excellence (CoE) to further strengthen our endeavor to create a circular economy. The Circular Economy CoE system consists of biomass, recycling, and climate change working groups, which are overseen by the steering committee where the CTO serves as the supervisor and the Green Chemicals Business Promotion Office as the secretariat. Through participation in each working group by related departments and information sharing and discussion, it is working to efficiently promote both projects run individually by departments and cross-organizational projects. In addition, policies discussed at the steering committee are fed back to working groups, thus ensuring consistency with companywide strategy.
Risk management & business strategies
The Mitsui Chemicals Group is committed to addressing “climate change” and “circular economy” as our material topics. We quantitatively evaluate and analyze the business impacts of climate change and the circular economy in terms of both opportunities and risks, reflecting them in our medium and long-term business strategies.
We identify risks and opportunities on a company-wide basis under our risk management system. As for climate change measures, each division includes its short-, medium-, and long-term challenges, goals, and measures in its annual budget, and also adds measures for circular economy starting in 2022.
As one of the measures to accelerate the promotion of each strategy for realizing a circular economy, we updated our ICP from 3,000 yen/t-CO2e to 15,000 yen/t-CO2e in April 2022. By adding IRR (c-IRR), which takes ICP into account, as a factor in decision-making for large-scale investments, we have a system that discusses the necessity of investments not only from an economic standpoint, but also from the perspective of reducing environmental impact.
Goals and Results
GHG emissions reduction rate
| KPI | Scope | FY2021 | FY2022 | FY2030 (Medium to Long-term) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Results | Goals | Goals | ||
| GHG emissions reduction rate (Scopes 1 and 2) * compared to FY2013 |
Mitsui Chemicals Group | 21% | 21% | 40% |
Sales revenue ratio of Blue Value™ and Rose Value™ products
| KPI | Scope | FY2021 | FY2022 | FY2030 (Medium to Long-term) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Results | Goals | Goals | ||
| Sales revenue ratio of Blue Value™ products | Mitsui Chemicals Group | 18% | 22% | 40% |
| Sales revenue ratio of Rose Value™ products | Mitsui Chemicals Group | 20% | 25% | 40% |
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