North America in Action

Since adopting North America’s Environmental Action Plan – DENSO International America’s regional response to carrying out our worldwide EcoVision 2015 – we’ve made significant headway with our chief goals. These are to help prevent global warming, recycle resources, and reduce environmentally hazardous substances.

Thus far, DENSO’s North American manufacturing locations have implemented several projects to reduce the environmental impact of their production activities – what we call Eco-Factory initiatives. These pages include the most current performance data showing our North American reductions in the usage of water, hazardous chemicals, landfill waste and CO2 emissions.

Water Usage Reductions
In North America since 1999, DENSO has succeeded in saving in water the equivalent of 658 million 12-oz. bottles.

DENSO’s target for reducing water use at North American manufacturing facilities was set at
50 percent by FY 2010, based on 1999 usage.

We surpassed our target ahead of schedule – achieving a 58 percent reduction in water consumption in FY 2006.

Some reduction activities undertaken at our North American facilities include:

• Utilizing automatic toilets, faucets and waterless urinals
• Reducing lawn sprinkling activities
• Reuse of waste water for irrigation
• Reducing use of cooling towers during colder periods

Going forward, we will continue to monitor the impact of new construction and equipment on water consumption and determine additional ways to minimize use.

Landfill Waste Reductions
Through our reduce, reuse, recycle principles, DENSO manufacturing facilities have diverted 3,739 tons of garbage from North American landfills.

This is a 62 percent reduction from our 1999 landfill waste base level and is the equivalent to about 623 truck-loads of garbage in an average-sized container.

 

Some of the activities undertaken by our North American locations include:

• Increasing waste segregation to increase amounts recycled
  
• Replacing hand towels with electric
  hand dryers
  
• Participating in state-led programs to eliminate junk mail sent to sites
  
• Creating teams to identify more recycling opportunities and enhance current efforts

Chemical Release Reductions
Our U.S. manufacturing facilities are subject to reporting to the Toxic Release Inventory, administered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. This publicly available database tracks toxic chemical releases and other waste management activities by industry in the United States.

Our U.S. facilities continue to reduce releases of these chemicals by using material substitutions and installing equipment to prevent or capture emissions.

Since 2000, our facilities have reduced chemical releases to Publicly Owned Treatment Works (POTW), landfills and air by 83 percent.

CO2 Emission Reductions
Our North American manufacturing facilities are committed to reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 18 percent by FY 2010, using FY 2004 emissions as our baseline. By the end of FY 2006, we had achieved a reduction of 11 percent.

Our facilities have attained CO2 reductions by:

• Conducting site energy audits
• Increasing the amount of natural lighting used on site
• Eliminating unnecessary lights
• Replacing existing lights with more energy efficient models
• Improving efficiency of compressed air system