Green Procurement Standards

USHIO is taking steps to ensure compliance with REACH regulations, which will increase regularly going forward. Specifically, we carry out full scale environmental surveys for 80% of the materials that we have purchased regularly in the past. We identify the risks for each material, and for those deemed to be high-risk, we visit suppliers again to carry out education and other measures.

 Since fiscal 2003, USHIO INC. has worked with suppliers to receive environmental documentation for all parts and materials in line with green procurement standards. The number of substances targeted by the REACH directive originally implemented in June 2007 has grown, and market demands and changes, including additional regulations, have rapidly accelerated, leading to a greater burden on our suppliers. Amid these conditions, USHIO is working to enable data coordination, storage, verification and calculation, as well as to improve turnaround times and data precision. USHIO began constructing a new database for lamp products in fiscal 2008, and continues to work on the project, aiming for implementation from fiscal 2011. USHIO also uses a database to review the chemical substances contained in products that contain many components targeted for review, and manages the data entered. Going forward, USHIO will upgrade its databases, with plans to incorporate a wide range of chemical substances, including those specified under the REACH directive.

The cooperation of many different departments is required in order to respond to customer requests for environmental surveys. USHIO believes that rather than relying on a limited number of people in charge of reporting, it is necessary to collaborate with related departments with specialized knowledge. Based on this, in fiscal 2007 the company clarified the role of each department and created a workflow. In fiscal 2008, the company continued with the creation of a database intended to manage the status of chemical substance surveys, and in fiscal 2009, it took steps to make the environmental database accessible throughout the Group globally in order to facilitate the same management at overseas locations. Now employees at overseas sites can conduct the same data queries, enabling quicker and more precise responses to overseas customers and suppliers.

As our production sites move offshore amid increasingly global corporate activity, our suppliers are also becoming global. For this reason, in fiscal 2010 we began developing a structure for surveying chemical substances contained in products, centered around our production sites in China. In fiscal 2011 we succeeded in establishing a common database with our Chinese production sites, and are working to enhance its management through regular meetings. We also visit local suppliers together with representatives from our Chinese production sites to hold study sessions on how to fill out surveys on chemical substances contained in products.

At USHIO, we have established Green Procurement Standards to guide material purchasing, and these standards are posted on our website. While complying with the RoHS directive and other laws and regulations specific to each country, we stipulate our own list of chemical substances with an environmental impact, and comply with both internal and external requirements relating to chemical substances contained in products. Under the Green Procurement Standards, we issue forms for self-assessment of standard compliance systems, and request that our business partners put in place an Environmental Management System (EMS). From March 2008 we also joined the JAMP consortium and become involved in creating industry-wide systems.

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