Biodiversity
The Teijin Group has adopted its desire for "Safeguarding our planet and all life on it" as one of the Values of its Corporate Philosophy. To that extent, the Group considers biodiversity throughout the entire life cycle of its products, from raw material procurement to production and product utilization, and strives to reduce its environmental burden.
Analysis of Dependence and Impact on Nature
Making use of ENCORE*, the Teijin Group has conducted an analysis of the dependence and impact on nature in each business unit. Based on the results of an analysis of the level of impact of ecosystem services in relevant sectors and the impact on nature caused by impact drivers, we confirmed that primarily the Materials Business and the Fibers & Products Converting Business are dependent on groundwater and surface water. In addition, these businesses have an impact on nature through water use, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, non-GHG air pollutants, soil pollutants, and solid waste.
- *ENCORE (Exploring Natural Capital Opportunities, Risks, and Exposure): A tool jointly developed by the Natural Capital Finance Alliance (NCFA)--a network of international financial institutions--and the United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), among others. Its purpose is to help private companies understand the level of their dependence and impact on natural resources.
Teijin Group's Dependence and Impact on Nature
In addition, the Group has created a Risk Map of Biodiversity Loss Due to Business Activities that visually presents the factors that affect biodiversity arising from business activities in the Materials Business and the Fibers & Products Converting Business. We are developing conservation activities based on the recognition of the impact our business activities have on natural capital and biodiversity.
Initiatives
Initiatives to Reduce CO2, Landfill Waste, Hazardous Chemicals, and Water
To reduce its environmental burden, the Teijin Group has established key performance indicators (KPIs) for CO2 emissions, water use, hazardous chemicals, and landfill waste and are pursuing relevant efforts accordingly. Please click on the following links for more details.
Initiatives for Green Procurement
When purchasing or procuring products and services, the Teijin Group recommends purchasing and procuring from suppliers that strive to reduce environmental burden in such ways as selecting products and services that consider the environment and have the smallest environmental burden possible. Please click on the following link for more details.
Initiatives to Address Marine Plastics
As a manufacturing company producing materials and other products, the Teijin Group has been striving to implement the 3Rs (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) toward the realization of a recycling-oriented society, but we realize that even more effort is required. It is for this reason that we have identified "achievement of a circular economy" as a materiality. A society in which a consumption-only economy continues is not a sustainable one. The Group wants to contribute toward the shift to a circular economy in which, just like the natural ecosystem cycle, resources continue to circulate, and the "throwaway" concept does not exist. We will, of course, endeavor to recycle resources in our production activities. But even more, we will promote the circularization of society by, for example, encouraging material recycling based on local production for local consumption in which discharged resources are used as recycled products and returned to the market. In this way, we will also contribute toward resolving the increasingly serious problem of marine plastics. Please click on the following link for more details.
Teijin Forest in Bangladesh
Teijin Group aims to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050. To that end, we are phasing out coal-fired thermal power to reduce carbon emissions from our business activities while promoting energy conservation and renewable energy and pursuing process innovation and other technological innovations. As an additional effort, Teijin's European Sustainable Technology Center (ESTIC) team compensates for the emissions from employee air travel. The team is collaborating with The Institute of Forestry and Environmental Sciences at the University of Chittagong (IFESCU), Bangladesh through Professor Mohammad Mosharraf Hossain to remove CO2 from the atmosphere by creating small but diverse and thriving forests using an adapted version of the Japanese plantation technique known as the Miyawaki Forest model.
The collaboration leverages an academic practice at IFESCU that requires every undergraduate student at the Institute to plant at least twenty seedlings of different plant species during their first semester and maintain the plantation for four years by mandatory reporting on the status of the plants at the end of each semester. The exercise aims to teach students the entire life cycle of planting trees and taking care of them till a plantation is established by each batch. In this project, the students were taken through the experience of creating a Miyawaki forest.
In 2022, just after the resumption of classes after the long vacation due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Teijin Forest was established on a degraded riparian site on both banks of a stream flowing through the campus of the University of Chittagong. The forest has seedlings of 70 different indigenous plant species, including a few threatened and critically endangered plant species of Bangladesh. The students routinely maintain the plantation and are happy to be a part of the Teijin Forest. This has helped them learn to raise seedlings, prepare the site for the Miyawaki forest model, source composts needed from the Rohingya refugee camp in Cox's Bazar as a circular solution to waste management, and finally create a thriving small forest. They are going through the experience of learning how a forest offsets a fraction of Teijin's carbon footprint, conserves indigenous plant species, and makes an excellent habitat for insects and wildlife. The students also learn to take measurements to report carbon capture through plantations.
The Teijin Forest has become a pilot demonstration plot for people to know about the Miyawaki forest model, the first instance of plantation-based voluntary carbon trading in Bangladesh. The Teijin Forest has already been recognized as a nature-based solution (NbS). The forest has its own set of challenges, such as some insect attacks, the high anthropogenic interferences leading to the reconstruction of the fences several times, the uncontrolled livestock grazing has caused some damages, and the severe rainfall in 2022 has damaged a few trees. However, this is part of the experience for Teijin as well to see the realities of establishing an forest. Overall, the forest has already shown stunning growth capturing carbon both as plant biomass and as soil carbon pool.
Teijin Forest within the University of Chittagong campus
