Basic approach and policy

Our Group takes the effective use of water resources as an important business issue and has set a target for the amount of water used and is working to ensure the effective use of water resources.

Governance and risk management

For more details, “Environmental Management”.

Strategies

Reduction of water usage

Our Group uses water in our manufacturing processes, as well as for cooling and cleaning.

At five of the ten sites that require water management plans, including both domestic and overseas sites, we are promoting the plan and are striving to ensure effective use of water resources. We are striving to reduce water usage by reducing the use of cooling water through the implementation of better manufacturing methods and by reducing the use of water through the optimization of cleaning methods and additions of cooling water recycling equipment. The Production Division in Japan, which uses a particularly high amount of water, reports monthly to the Environment and Safety Committee on the reasons for increases or decreases, as well as the reduction measures implemented. In FY2024, the amount of water use increased by 5.6% year on year due to an increase in production volume.

Wastewater treatment

Since we installed a wastewater treatment system at the Fukaya Facility in 1969, we have been installing and upgrading wastewater treatment facilities in our production facilities using various water purification technologies, such as the activated sludge method, dissolved air floatation method, anaerobic method, coagulation and sedimentation method, and the membrane filtration method.

Wastewater from production facilities is treated through a tertiary treatment process. Wastewater from the R&D Center is treated until the secondary treatment process before being discharged to the sewer system. We comply with wastewater standards in terms of regulation values, etc., as prescribed in the Water Pollution Control Law, prefectural ordinances, and agreements with communities.

Water stress analysis

In addition to addressing climate change, our Group is working to establish a system for managing water risk strategies and initiatives through the company-wide Environment and Safety Committee, in response to the growing global interest in and importance of water resources.

We analyze water stress using the Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas from the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the WWF’s Water Risk Filter. We recognize that water risk is not high in our production areas in Japan; however, four sites in our U.S. and China production areas have been identified as being under high water stress. For example, at our sites in China, where water stress is high, we have set a target of keeping water consumption per unit of production below the five-year average. To achieve this, we are focusing on measures such as increasing continuous production and reducing the frequency of equipment washing.

We recognize that water is a vital global resource and that strengthening water management is essential. We will continue to address this issue appropriately. We will continue working to reduce water usage while monitoring the progress of our measures for achieving our reduction targets.

Indicators and targets

In FY2024, we reduced water usage by 2.7%, exceeding our target of 2.1% reduction per unit of production year-on-year.
For more details, please refer to the T. Hasegawa Group ESG Data Book (PDF) .