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Blue Value™ / Rose Value™

Rose Value™ — QOL Improvement Contributions

La Vie en rose

Days brimming with happiness and hope for people from all walks of life.
La Vie en rose

The Goal of Rose Value™

The Mitsui Chemicals Group, whose five social contribution areas in its Corporate Mission include “promoting human well-being,” lists “a comfortable society in which people can enjoy healthy lives and well-being” and “an inclusive society creating diverse value” as its ideal future society and aims to realize this through its business activities. The Group belongs in the upstream process and provides products and services broadly to a variety of industries, which makes it difficult to grasp the roles that their features and characteristics play in the final use. That is why, in order to truly realize our ideal future society through business activities, the Group believes it is important to share with its various stakeholders, including direct and indirect customers, how its products and services contribute to society throughout their life cycles. Based on this idea, Rose Value™ was designed to evaluate contributions focusing mainly on those associated with QOL improvement, and to visualize their values.

The Goal of Rose Value™

Sharing QOL improvement contributions through Rose Value™

Features and characteristics of the products and services of the Mitsui Chemicals Group are often described physically using expressions such as “high rigidity,” “low moisture permeability,” and “low density.” With Rose Value™, the contribution of such features and characteristics to solving social challenges, or the QOL improvement contributions provided throughout the life cycle, can be visualized.
Visualization can include the following: “Increasing the durability of food packages through high rigidity reduces damage during food transportation, leading to a reduction in food loss,” “Low moisture permeability of medical packaging materials protects moisture-soluble medicines, thereby maintaining the quality of medicines and leading to more advanced medical care,” and “The use of low-density materials makes products light and easy to handle, enabling easy access by children and elderly people with limited strength, leading to an inclusive society.” It clarifies how the functions and features of the Group's products and services are linked to QOL improvement and social value in an easy-to-understand manner. We believe that by sharing our recognition of value with our stakeholders in this way, we will further expand the points of contact between our Group and society.
Through these activities, the Group aims to maximize the QOL improvements of Rose Value™ products and services through their social implementation.

Sharing QOL improvement contributions through Rose Value™

Rose Value™ Assessment Index and Certification Criteria

Rose Value™ is assessed based on three contribution categories: (1) Enriching life and society; (2) Extending healthy life-span; and (3) Protecting food. Based on the needs of social challenges such as the targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG Targets), we set our unique assessment index, the Rose Value™ Index, from social issue perspectives, such as universal design and amenity, resilient and smart city, universal health coverage, and food security, and we evaluate and review for certification based on these indices how the value provided by our Group’s products and services contribute to QOL improvements. The assessment index is reviewed accordingly to reflect changes in the environment. In response to the changing challenges and needs of society, we made an amendment in FY2019 to add a category to the assessment index for contribution to sustainable communities, including disaster prevention/mitigation and longer infrastructure life.
For evaluation and review, we not only evaluate the contributions of the end products, but evaluate extensively the contributions of the intermediate processing stage as well as the contributions to the supply chain. This is because we believe evaluating the value of products and services throughout their life cycle will lead to maximizing the value of their contribution to improving QOL for society as a whole.

Maximization of QOL Improvement Contributions throughout the Life Cycle

- Hypothetical Case: Product Used as Infrastructure Pipes -

Maximization of QOL Improvement Contributions throughout the Life Cycle

*The image is a hypothetical case and may differ from information on actual products of our Group.

QOL Improvement Assessment Index - Rose Value™ Index

Contributions Rose Value™ Index

Enriching life and society

1 No poverty
3 Good health and well-being
5 Gender equality
6 Clean water and sanitation
7 Affordable and clean energy
9 Industry, innovation, infrastructure
11 Sustainable cities and communities
13 Climate action
  • Improving comfort in people’s lives
    Provide products, buildings, and spaces that take into consideration the needs of a variety of people
  • Enhancing nursing care
    Specialized nursing and caregiving is a component of “improving comfort in people’s lives”
  • Ensuring the sustainability of communities
    Promote disaster prevention/mitigation measures, longer service life of the infrastructure, and shift to ICT in communities

Extending healthy life-span

1 No poverty
2 Zero hunger
3 Good health and well-being
6 Clean water and sanitation
  • Supporting physical well-being
    Assist, improve, and heighten functions throughout the body, either directly or indirectly
  • Advancing medical care and pharmaceuticals
    Raise the level of medical technology and service in every phase of health, from pre-symptomatic disease to illness, or improve aspects of medicine functionality, quality, and production
  • Preventing and taking action against infectious diseases
    Prevent or take action against infectious diseases
  • Improving accessibility to nutrition and water
    Simplify and/or improve production and/or the delivery of nutrition and water

Protecting food

2 Zero hunger
12 Responsible consumption, production
  • Improving food productivity
    Raise food yields as well as work efficiency; improve related equipment capabilities
  • Guaranteeing safe and stable food distribution
    Secure and raise the level of safety and stability in food distribution
  • Reducing food loss and food waste
    Reduce waste from the perspectives of maintaining food freshness, extending “best-before date,” packaging for contents separation and compartmentalization, loss when shipping, and other factors
Contributions
  Rose Value™ Index

Enriching life and society

1 No poverty 3 Good health and well-being 5 Gender equality 6 Clean water and sanitation 7 Affordable and clean energy 9 Industry, innovation, infrastructure 11 Sustainable cities and communities 13 Climate action
 
  • Improving comfort in people’s lives
    Provide products, buildings, and spaces that take into consideration the needs of a variety of people
  • Enhancing nursing care
    Specialized nursing and caregiving is a component of “improving comfort in people’s lives”
  • Ensuring the sustainability of communities
    Promote disaster prevention/mitigation measures, longer service life of the infrastructure, and shift to ICT in communities

Extending healthy life-span

1 No poverty 2 Zero hunger 3 Good health and well-being 6 Clean water and sanitation
 
  • Supporting physical well-being
    Assist, improve, and heighten functions throughout the body, either directly or indirectly
  • Advancing medical care and pharmaceuticals
    Raise the level of medical technology and service in every phase of health, from pre-symptomatic disease to illness, or improve aspects of medicine functionality, quality, and production
  • Preventing and taking action against infectious diseases
    Prevent or take action against infectious diseases
  • Improving accessibility to nutrition and water
    Simplify and/or improve production and/or the delivery of nutrition and water

Protecting food

2 Zero hunger 12 Responsible consumption, production
 
  • Improving food productivity
    Raise food yields as well as work efficiency; improve related equipment capabilities
  • Guaranteeing safe and stable food distribution
    Secure and raise the level of safety and stability in food distribution
  • Reducing food loss and food waste
    Reduce waste from the perspectives of maintaining food freshness, extending “best-before date,” packaging for contents separation and compartmentalization, loss when shipping, and other factors

Example of Rose Value™ Evaluation, Review, and Certification

Target Product: MR™
Application: Ophthalmic lens material
Functional value of product: High Abbe number, lightweight, high impact resistance, high refractive index

Our MR™ series products are used as ophthalmic lens materials due to their optical properties. Their high refractive index and strength can support the way people who wish to improve their vision see, so the products can be described as contributing to “Supporting physical well-being.” They also contribute to “Improving comfort in people’s lives,” as they enable thinner and lighter glasses and improve the comfort of glasses, which may allow them to be worn for longer hours. For these reasons, the MR™ series is certified as Rose Value™ product under two contribution categories; “extending healthy life-span” and “enriching life and society.”
“Improving comfort in people’s lives” is an element for realizing the social contribution of “Enriching life and society,” which is the broader concept, and simply “becoming more convenient/comfortable” is not considered applicable. For example, ophthalmic lens material products with medium or lower refractive indices are certified as Rose Value™ under “Supporting physical well-being,” but not certified as Rose Value™ from the perspective of “Improving comfort in people’s lives” due to insufficient contribution impact. The focus is on whether they help solve social challenges, and we seek advice and views from external experts regarding the validity of certification in terms of the impact of social contribution.

Expectations from external expert (Rose Value™ advisor)

Since fiscal 2019, “Ensuring the sustainability of communities” has been added as a new evaluation category in the Rose Value™ Index. It includes perspectives such as disaster prevention/mitigation measures, longer service life of infrastructure, and shift to ICT in communities. This aligns with the Mitsui Chemicals Group’s pledge under VISION 2030 to roll out a social issue perspective across all of its companies and businesses, and to move away from its historical business focus on materials supply to those based on a social issue perspective. It has also set a Rose Value™ products sales revenue ratio of 40% or more as a key performance indicator in its long-term business plan targets. This is an era in which employees having excellent sensitivity to the needs and challenges of society deliver a competitive edge to a business. I believe that the Rose Value™ Index is a potent opportunity to gain such a perspective.


Senior Counselor, Japan Research Institute, Limited

Mr. ADACHI Eiichiro

*Each affiliation is from the time when the article was created.

Mr. ADACHI Eiichiro