This special feature highlights our initiatives in environmentally oriented services. It reflects contributions from participants in a teleconference between representatives from our eastern and western Japan operations. The eastern Japan participants were Toshiyuki Suzuki and Takeomi Kaneko of the Network Business Division’s Integrated Network Department and Osamu Nohara of that division’s IP Network Department. The western Japan participants were Yasushi Ogura, Koichi Inada, Katsuya Taniguchi, Yasuyoshi Harada, Toshiharu Kato, Saburo Miyamoto, and Takayoshi Ohhigashi, all of the Integrated Network Department, Yuji Komaba of the Core Network Department, and Osamu Fukuhara of the Service Network Department.
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Compliance Central to Industrial Waste Treatment
Removing satellite communications equipment
Industrial waste statistics from the Ministry of the Environment show that Japan produced 417 million metric tons of industrial waste in fiscal 2004. Of that amount, 214 million metric tons (accounting for 51.3% of the total) was reused, 177 million metric tons (42.5%) of waste was converted into raw materials, and 26 million metric tons (6.2%) was disposed. Data for fiscal 2005 revealed 558 cases of companies illegally dumping 172,000 metric tons of industrial waste.
The telecoms industry climate has changed over the past 10 years with the rise of broadband communications and outsourcing. NTT Communications has responded to such developments by making it a top priority to reduce the environmental impact of its wastes, as part of which it ensures that disposal complies strictly with the law.
Cutting and storing industrial waste
We have reinforced compliance by building partnerships with trustworthy industrial waste contractors while harnessing information technology to improve oversight. Good examples are our electronic manifest system and our use of photos to confirm treatment processes. We aim to keep recycling at least 99% of dismantled telecommunications facilities while increasingly reusing and recycling industrial wastes.
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Partnering Trustworthy Waste Contractors
It is important to choose the right contractors to collect, transport, and process industrial wastes to comply with laws and ordinances.
We regularly audit our industrial waste treatment and the activities of 120 contractors around the nation. Our assessments are strict, covering such areas as certification, management situations, treatment capacities and storage site administration, recycling rates, and possible disputes between contractors and local communities. We then determine whether to use such firms. Mutual trust is essential to ensure that contractors treat waste properly.
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Overseeing Industrial Waste Treatment Sites
Extensive measures are sometimes necessary at these sites. For example, we now have to safeguard wastes containing copper and other metals because high prices have made these resources vulnerable to theft.
Waste collection and transportation contractor
We need to follow special procedures when dismantling satellite communications and other facilities. For example, we must consider local weather and wind conditions. There is often no place to store dismantled equipment on-site, so we have to ensure that trucks stand by to transport antennas as soon as cranes take them down. Antennas are sometimes in mountains. We must seek government permission to remove obstructing tree branches. If access roads are narrow we need to use the right-sized trucks.
Dismantling and recycling equipment at premises of intermediate treatment contractor
If we expect to create a lot of industrial waste, we may work simultaneously on several facilities near each other and reduce fuel consumed in transportation. Before removing old batteries, we secure safe indoor storage places to avoid the dangers that could arise from leaks. Some industrial wastes require special management, notably battery fluids, polychlorinated biphenyls, and asbestos. We have specialist cont-ractors treat such waste, with qualified in-house personnel overseeing such work. We helped three such people obtain administrative quali-fications in fiscal 2007.
We always closely monitor the activities of the waste collection, transportation, and intermediate treatment contractors we have audited and approved. We check photos taken at all stages of treating our waste and have several people confirm each electronic manifest. We can thus ensure that such contractors complete waste treatment in keeping with the law.
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Two Important Factors
Telecommunications companies constantly deploy new services harnessing the latest technologies and facilities. They must also properly retire and dispose of older equipment and facilities. These two factors are important to assessing a company’s true corporate value.
All our employees seek to maintain high standards of integrity as we generate new services while reusing and recycling waste.
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Osamu Nohara
IP Network Department
Network Business Division
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Toshiyuki Suzuki
Integrated Network Department
Network Business Division
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Takeomi Kaneko
Integrated Network Department
Network Business Division
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Using ICT to Lower Environmental Loads
■Estimated Environmental Impact Reductions from OCN Services
Kilograms of carbon dioxide emitted annually
We use NTT Information Sharing Laboratory Group’s Kankyo Shiro system to quantify how we are lowering environmental impact through our ICT services. The system complies with the Japan Forum on Eco-efficiency’s Guideline for Information and Communication Technology (ICT)Eco-Efficiency Evaluation.
We used this system to compare carbon dioxide emissions from OCN fiber-optic Internet services and conventional distribution approaches. The 19 service categories included e-mail, e-mail magazines, music downloads, and Internet banking.
We found that OCN services offered a roughly 54% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. Emission savings were 102 kilograms per customer line. This translated into a total emissions reduction among subscribers to OCN 's fiber-optic Internet services of about 230,000 metric tons annually as of the end of fiscal 2006.
See the following Japanese-language website for details:http://www.ntt.com/eco/ict/ocn.html