Reducing environmental load
Megmilk Snow Brand Group Environmental policy
The Megmilk Snow Brand Group practices business activities centered on milk created in a natural environment and promotes coexistence with the global environment. To achieve this, we have established the Megmilk Snow Brand Group’s Environmental Policy, in accordance with the Group’s Charter of Corporate Behavior, and strive to effectively use sustainable resources.
Comply with environmental laws and ordinances as well as voluntary standards, and rapidly respond to legal revisions.
Effectively use limited resources, curb the emission of global warming gases and waste, and continue to recycle and reuse by identifying
important material issues and achieving KPI.
Promote awareness of environmental conservation among all employees and proactively promote environmental education.
Conserve biodiversity and contribute to the creation of future society by using resources in a sustainable way in business activities.
Proactively disclose environmental information to promote transparent environmental conservation activities.
Environmental Management Organization
The Company’s environmental management is carried out comprehensively via an environmental management system headed by the Managing Environment Director serving as the Supervising Environment Manager, with the President serving as the Chief Environment Officer. By appointing an environmental management manager for each organization, the Company is involving all employees and maintaining an environmental management system that complies with ISO 14001: 2015*.
* International criteria for creating systems to address environmental conservation within an organization
Environmental Management Organization Chart
ISO14001 certification
Megmilk Snow Brand proactively engages in environmental conservation to reduce the environmental impact resulting from our business activities. To objectively present the results of these initiatives both internally and externally, we have acquired ISO14001 certification. ISO14001 standards were revised in 2015 and in 2016 our entire Group (70 locations, including two Group companies) acquired certification based on the revised standards. In February 2018, we newly acquired certification at Yatsugatake Milk Industry Co., Ltd.
Environmental audit structure
Environmental audits include external inspections conducted by an inspection agency and an internal audit conducted internally. These inspections are used to comprehensively confirm the status of EMS operations and legal compliance.
Internal environmental audits at Megmilk Snow Brand are a combination of a primary audit conducted by the Production Department and a secondary audit conducted by the Sustainability Promotion Dept. Through the primary audit, auditors closely familiar with the relevant tasks enable workflow improvements while the secondary audit involves a legal check from an objective perspective and helps to identify problems.
Environmental education
Megmilk Snow Brand works to improve environmental awareness through various environmental education systems, including e-learning as well as internal environmental auditor development training conducted by the corporate EMS office and individual education conducted by each department.
Providing education for all applicable employees is very important. For position-specific e-learning, we require all executive and employees to complete the general education course and each year we receive a 100% participation rate.
Initiatives by each section
The Megmilk Snow Brand Group uses significant amounts of natural resources and energy during every phase of our product life cycle, and in response each section implements various initiatives to reduce the resource losses and environmental load generated through these processes as much as possible.
Energy conservation activities and waste product reduction are typical activities conducted on a company-wide level. Additionally, the R&D section conducts environmentally conscious product design, the Procurement section shifted to thin plastic containers and environmentally-conscious containers, and our plants are implementing measures such as optimizing energy use and treating wastewater. Our Logistics section is implementing a modal shift* in raw materials and product shipment and working to improve load rates. At our branch offices and sales offices, we are promoting eco-driving for all sales vehicles. In the Administration section, we work to limit the energy required for heating and cooling by practicing “cool biz” and “warm biz”, and are shifting to paperless business.
Improving wastewater treatment performance
At our Sapporo Plant, we increased the number of wastewater equalizing tank and installed a fluidized bed*1 for our wastewater treatment facilities.
By increasing the number of wastewater equalizing tanks, we are able to improve water quality consistency by increasing the volume of reserves of waste water and raw water.
This also enables the parallel operation of existing aeration tanks*2 and the fluidized bed, enabling a 63% year-on-year reduction in wastewater generated from aeration tank treatment.
CO2 emissions reduction
Plants which use heavy oil as fuel produce significant amounts of CO2 but converting it from heavy oil to liquid natural gas (LNG) will reduce CO2 emissions by approximately 20%. We also are gradually converting to liquid natural gas at our Hokkaido Plant, which previously used heavy fuel oil.
We also switched to LED lights for the lighting used in our plants and refrigerators to promote energy conservation.
At our Isobunnai Plant, we shifted to a more efficient skim milk concentrator to promote energy conservation and reduce CO2 emissions.
Shift to lightweight containers
We worked towards reducing the weight of plastic bottle containers, resulting in a 10% weight reduction.
In FY2018, we are expecting weight reduction efforts to result in an approximately 200 ton annual reduction* in plastic use.
Proactively participating in environmental events and campaigns
At Megmilk Snow Brand, we proactively participate in environmental events and campaigns.
We participated in the CO2 Reduction/Light- Down Campaign organized by the Ministry of the Environment. On June 21 (summer solstice) and July 7 (Cool Earth Day), we simultaneously cut off the lights of outdoor advertisements at 23 locations.
As a member of the Committee for Milk Container Environmental Issues, we collaborated with the Japan Milk Carton Recycling Association at the Eco Life Fair (Yoyogi Park) in June and at EcoPro (Tokyo Big Sight) in December to promote the importance of milk carton recycling and the importance of using recycled paper. We accomplished this by holding various workshops such as how to tear milk cartons open by hand and how to use milk cartons to create handmade post cards.
Carbon offsetting initiatives
Carbon offsetting is the practice of purchasing CO2 emissions credits earned through forest preservation efforts such as tree-planting and clean energy business to indirectly offset a part of the CO2 emissions generated through corporate activities.
Megmilk Snow Brand has long purchased Hokkaido Carbon Credits. Additionally, in November we purchased Nakashibetsu Town J-Credits.
Procurement activities to support the realization of a sustainable society
In accordance with the Megmilk Snow Brand Group Procurement Policy, we practice procurement activities that promote social responsibilities such as fair trade, human rights, and the environment, as well as work to procure sustainable raw materials. We also conduct regular inspections regarding the details of initiatives conducted by our business partners.
