Environmental Impact of Business Activities

JSR strives to reduce its environmental impact by generating and closely analyzing input data (including use of energy, water resources, and chemical substances), as well as output data (including solid waste and emissions into the atmosphere and hydrosphere).

Approaches to LCA & LCI

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) refers to the quantitative assessment of the total impact a product has on the environment throughout its lifecycle, from the procurement of raw materials to the manufacture, sale, use, and disposal of the product. The calculation of inventory data pertaining to input resources and the environmental impact of waste produced during the manufacturing of the product (LCI data) are required when carrying out an LCA.
The entire synthetic rubber industry teamed together to define how to compute LCA data for notable synthetic rubber materials. Needless to say, JSR was also actively involved. The computation results are registered on the database of the Japan Environmental Management Association for Industry (JEMAI) LCA Forum. LCI data for fine chemical products also allows us to determine the amount of CO₂ emitted during production processes.
In FY2011 (April 1, 2010 to March 31, 2011), we started looking into using LCA in product design from the research and development stage. As a first step, we held workshops at Yokkaichi Research Center and Tsukuba Research Laboratories on LCA fundamentals and LCI calculation methods. Of the various LCI data, we focused our attention on CO₂ emission intensity and performed actual estimates of the CO₂ emission intensity of products being developed by each center. Going forward, we hope to develop systems to help incorporate CO₂ emissions data into the product design process.

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