The vision aims to minimize the environmental impact of business operations and promote activities to restore and conserve the ecosystem beyond the impact.
By 2050, the Brother Group will minimize the environmental impact of business operations on the ecosystem and promote activities to restore and conserve the ecosystem beyond the impact.
Main efforts: Biodiversity conservation activities, reduction of CO2 emissions, and promotion of resource circulation
Progress Towards Biodiversity Conservation Targets
The Brother Group is working to quantify and reduce the environmental impact of business activities on the ecosystem toward achieving the Environmental Vision 2050. In these activities, for the group's main products, a relationship map between business activities and biodiversity was developed to understand the stages in the life cycle of each unit of product where environmental impact occurs and provide customers with products having even less environmental impact.
For many years, the Brother Group has been conducting voluntary biodiversity conservation activities at each site as described in Efforts to Conserve Biodiversity. In FY2021, to invigorate the activities of all Brother Group companies, the group supported World Oceans Day and encouraged all employees at all sites to join in zero ocean waste activities. As a result, more than 21,000 participants from 42 offices in Japan and overseas participated in the activities. We will continue the "zero ocean waste activities" in FY2022.
The Brother Group will continue to quantify the environmental impact of business activities on the ecosystem, deploy effective environmental impact reduction activities and ecosystem conservation activities, and aim to achieve the medium-term target for FY2030 and the Environmental Vision 2050.
Medium-term target for FY2030
- The Brother Group will assess the environmental impact of its business operations on the ecosystem and the effectiveness of restoration and conservation activities, and works to avoid and reduce the environmental impact on the ecosystem.
- The manufacturing and sales facilities of the entire group will work on ecosystem restoration and conservation activities on a voluntary basis depending on the situation in each region.
Relationship Map Between Business Activities and Biodiversity
The relationship map between business activities and biodiversity is based on product life cycle assessment. This map quantifies the environmental impact caused by the input and output in individual processes of business activities and shows the rate of environmental impact in the individual processes. Furthermore, the map lists the following five items as the major impacts that business activities have on the ecosystem: climate change, pollution, biological resource loss, habitat loss, and invasive alien species, and describes the group's ecosystem conservation activities designed to reduce the risk of these impacts.
[Example] Relationship between business and biodiversity for the laser multi-function printer
Relationship between business and biodiversity: Laser multi-function printer [PDF/222KB]
Efforts to Conserve Biodiversity
Supporting conservation activities in tropical rainforests through resource circulation
In 2009, Brother International Europe Ltd. (BIE) partnered with Cool Earth, a U.K.-based NPO promoting activities to protect the environment in the basin of the Amazon River, and joins with 20 European Brother sales facilities in promoting
"the Cool Earth Eco-Rewards initiative". This initiative donates funds corresponding to the volume of collected consumables, such as toner and ink cartridges, to Cool Earth.
The fund is being used for activities to protect
the tropical rainforests and habitats of endangered species in the Republic of Peru, which Cool Earth supports. Starting in FY2010, "the Click for the Earth" program, a donation feature available on the Brother Group's special
website on the environment (brotherearth.com; currently, the SDGs special website Brother SDGs STORY), was incorporated into donation activities for Cool Earth, expanding the scope of support. The funds donated through Click for
the Earth are also being utilized for this activity. BIE plans to continue supporting this activity.
- Working with Cool Earth charity to protect the rainforest
- Preserving the Rainforest Through Partnership
Continuous activities to stop desertification and protect people's lives
Desertification is rapidly advancing in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (Inner Mongolia).
In an effort to bring back the grasslands of the past, local Brother employees have joined with OISCA and local residents to plant more
than 10,000 tree seedlings. They also dug wells to help water the trees, and succeeded in pumping up groundwater. Slowly but surely, new trees are putting their roots down into the desert.
This project is also suggesting
new livelihoods to local residents, such as alternate livestock and sale of traditional Chinese medicines.
- Japan - Brother's Forest Gujo, Project for restoring ecosystem and interacting with the locals
- Thailand - Mangrove Reforestation Project
- China - Project for Combating Desertification in Inner Mongolia
- The Americas - Environment and Education
- Slovakia - Tatras mountains the reforestation project
- Australia - Project Manta
Other Biodiversity-Related Activities
- A webpage that introduces the cooperative projects recognized by UNDB-J (Link to the website of UNDB-J)
