Waste
The IHI Group strives to reduce waste by improving production yield at plants as well as sorting and recovering resources from waste.
To ensure all waste is disposed of properly, our waste management initiatives also review collection, transportation, and waste disposal contracts, verify final disposal through digital manifests, and confirm circumstances on-site at intermediate and final waste disposal sites.
Cooperation with Third Parties to Reduce Waste Emissions
The IHI Group works with expert consultants to reduce the waste generated by its plants and offices. As a result, we discovered useful waste that can be recovered as valuable resources, and confirmed whether innovations to waste management could further reduce the remaining waste. Some of our business sites have already begun taking on specific waste reduction initiatives.
Water Resources
The IHI Group primarily uses public and industrial water as water resources. In regions with abundant underground and river water resources, we use these resources in combination with public water careful to reduce our water withdrawal. Therefore, each plant and office considers the water quality and quantity necessary for its use and chooses the best resource to withdrawal water.
In particular, we purify and distribute underground water through a relatively easy manner in regions with potable underground water. Cooling water for heat treatment furnaces and other equipment uses river or sea water instead of potable water. We also use heat exchangers to avoid pollution risks during water discharge. In addition, sprinklers on our grounds reuse water processed through tertiary treatment as an alternative to public water as much as possible.
Water Risk Survey (On-Site Visits)
In fiscal 2021, the IHI Corporation conducted various audits centered upon water risks at 6 different sites.
These audits also looked at energy management systems and the progress of PCB disposal.
Water risks in this report refer to risks of waste water from our plants, offices, and other business establishments contaminating public waters. These audits verified proper water management by visiting each site, interviewing the people in charge, and conducting physical on-site inspections. We also share the findings of these audits to raise awareness about water risks. IHI was also able to confirm PCB detoxification efforts were on track with plans.
In the future, the IHI Group plans to successively audit whether plants that did not undergo on-site audits present any risk to public waters.
Specific Efforts to Reduce Water Use
The IHI Group heightens awareness about reducing water use by tracking monthly (or bimonthly) water withdrawal by each environmental management center to graph annually for year-by-year comparisons. By monitoring the annual changes in water withdrawal for the same period each year, we expect the data will help us discover any leakage quickly.
Chemical Substances
Chemical substances used at our plants come with leakage and other risks, which may result in polluting the soil, water, or air. We must not only safely manage these chemical substances during use but also in every process, from warehousing to disposal.
The IHI Group prevents leakage during purchase and transport and regularly verifies and inspects the retaining storage walls, deterioration on interior walls, and corrosion of transfer pipes. We regularly repair equipment with any deterioration or aging found during these inspections. Each of our plants is also updating Safety Data Sheets on the dangers of any chemical substances contained in products in light of legal amendments revising the list of controlled substances.
Chemical Substances Contained in Products
Every IHI Group product containing chemicals complies with the list of regulated and controlled substances, which becomes longer each year. We aggregate data about the chemical substances contained in products throughout the supply chain and confirm whether any chemicals are prohibited or exceed acceptable levels. The IHI Group is also furthering a system to provide this same data to customers. Regulations to control the chemical substances contained in products are becoming more stringent than ever, not only in the EU but also in North America and Asia. Our Group pays extremely close attention and responds accordingly to regulations that apply to each product as one business risk.
