Resource Circulation and Pollution Prevention

Under the Act on Confirmation, etc. of Release Amounts of Specific Chemical Substances in the Environment and Promotion of Improvements to the Management Thereof (PRTR Act), we report annually to the government the quantities of designated chemical substances released into the environment and transferred off site, for each substance we manufacture or use. We will continue to strengthen our management of releases of PRTR-listed substances and aim to maintain them at or below the FY2010 level, in line with the voluntary targets established by the Japan Chemical Industry Association. Specifically, we aim to keep total annual releases from our domestic sites at 36.7 tons or less and are promoting equipment modifications and other measures toward further reductions.

We are systematically reducing emissions of butadiene and acrylonitrile, which are designated as priority substances under Japan’s Air Pollution Control Act, by installing collection facilities and implementing measures such as improving facilities to prevent evaporation from openings in manufacturing facilities.

Our emissions of NOx and SOx, which are air pollutants, occur during the combustion of fuels such as BC heavy oil.
Each worksite complies with regulatory limits under pollution-related laws and regulations and with voluntary management standards, striving to curb emissions in daily operations.
We are also promoting measures such as the adoption of low-sulfur heavy oil and fuel conversion to liquefied natural gas (LNG).
Going forward, we will proceed with technical and economic assessments toward converting to fuels with lower environmental impact, aiming for even lower emission levels.
In addition, we continuously monitor and work to reduce emissions of hazardous air pollutants designated under the Air Pollution Control Act as priority substances due to their potential health risks. For example, at our domestic sites, we are strengthening acrylonitrile recovery facilities and implementing equipment improvements to prevent evaporation from manufacturing equipment openings, while studying technologies to achieve a target acrylonitrile emission level of 1 ton or less per year.

To help preserve the aquatic environment, we adopt the regulatory limits set by water pollution laws and local ordinances as our own target values, and monitor COD^* and discharges of nitrogen, phosphorus, and other substances. All of these are kept below our established targets. At our domestic production sites, where water usage is high, wastewater from each plant is collected and treated through processes such as neutralization, oil separation, and removal of solid matter. In addition, we employ activated sludge treatment, in which microorganisms break down the organic substances in the wastewater.

Article 3 of our Responsible Care Policy commits us to “Minimize the discharge of hazardous chemicals and waste.”
Under the Act on Promotion of Resource Circulation for Plastics, which came into force in April 2022, Zeon is classified as a business that generates a large amount of industrial waste from plastic products (250 tons or more per year). In line with the spirit of the Act, we are working to reduce the amount of waste generated, with the goals of maintaining waste generation at or below the FY2021 level and maintaining a recycling rate of 50% or higher (the Japan Chemical Industry Association’s voluntary target).

We produce Safety Data Sheets (SDS) providing information including GHS^*1 classification results, product hazards, and cautions for handling, etc.
For some of our products, we also compile safety-related information into Safety Summaries, which we provide to GPS/JIPS^*2.