Yokohama Rubber has achieved a core corporate goal – a 100% weighting for environmentally friendly products across its product portfolio. This goal was originally established back in FY2006 with Yokohama endeavoring to achieve it by the end of FY2017.
One of the basic policies of the company’s previous medium-term management plan – Grand Design 100 (GD100), initiated back in FY2006 and concluded at the end of FY2017 – was to “assert world-class strengths in technologies for protecting the environment”. Its effort to make its entire product portfolio environmentally friendly was one of the concrete actions taken to fulfill that policy.
Certification as an environmentally friendly product is an in-house process based on the evaluation of four environmental functions that have relevancy from the material procurement stage to disposal and recycling: prevention of global warming; resource recycling; resource conservation; and safety and comfort.
All new products must achieve an average score for the four guideline functions at least 5% higher than the existing product and must not go below the existing product in any of the four guideline functions. If those guidelines are not met, the product will not be placed on the market.
Prior to the launch of GD100, Yokohama Rubber’s product portfolio had an environmentally friendly product weighting of 40% in FY2005, but the weighting rose steadily thereafter, reaching 70% in FY2009 and surpassing 90% in FY2012.
March 6, 2018