CSR Activity Report (CSR Guideline Activity Reports) - Safety, Accident Prevention, and Environmental Preservation

Initiatives for Managing Water Resources

Toray Group is working to provide solutions to water resources problems around the world, based on the following policies. In its own operations, the Group effectively uses and recycles water and properly manages water resources.

  1. Toray Group recognizes that water is one of the most important resources for humanity, and that people are confronting problems related to water resources in many areas of the world.
  2. Toray Group is committed to helping to solve global water resources problems through its products, technologies and services.
  3. Toray Group continuously monitors the state of regional water resources, and conducts appropriate management of water resources, such as avoiding excessive water withdrawal so as to share these precious resources with the local communities where the Group operates.

Toray Group operates a variety of businesses around the world, and depending on the location, it may be greatly affected by water withdrawal restrictions. Its assessment, therefore, is that the Group faces a large risk regarding limits on water usage.
Accordingly, Toray Group uses the Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas, a water risk assessment tool provided by the World Resources Institute (WRI), to identify locations of high stress through water stress surveys in regions around the world where the Group’s manufacturing sites and offices are located. In addition, the amount of water used in business activities in each region is monitored annually using a questionnaire from Toray Industries. Toray Group has determined that approximately 4.5% of its entire water withdrawals at all sites, including plants and offices, comes from regions where water stress is assessed to be high or extremely high.

As stated in its Sustainability Vision, Toray Group has set a target for reducing water usage per-unit of revenue by 2030. The Group understands the effects of water stress and promotes the 3Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle) for water resources through improvement of manufacturing processes, water-saving activities, and utilization of recycled water.
The Group fully understands local regulations regarding effluent and constantly monitors water quality, such as COD, before releasing effluent from its plants into public bodies of water.
Moreover, the Group reuses cooling water and recycles wastewater, especially at group companies outside Japan located in drought areas, and strives to reduce the amount of new water withdrawals taken from outside as industrial water.

Water Resource Management by Toray Group
Water Resource Management by Toray Group

Related Information

See the following page for information on how Toray Group handles water hazard risks (floods, storm surges, etc.).

Water Usage Management

Water usage per unit of revenue (%)

■Reporting scope
Toray Group
■Target
At least 25% lower than fiscal 2013 (Fiscal 2022)

Result in fiscal 2021

28.3%

In fiscal 2021, Toray Group used 224 million tons of water, approximately 100,000 tons more than the previous fiscal year. Compared to the amount used per unit of revenue in fiscal 2013, set to an index value of 100, usage in fiscal 2021 was 71.7 points, down 10.7 points from the previous fiscal year. In fiscal 2021, although the total volume of water used increased due to higher production volumes based on business recovery associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, water usage actually decreased per unit of revenue, thanks to robust improvement in sales revenue.

Related Information

Comparative Water Usage Per Unit of Net Sales (Per Unit of Revenue)*(Toray Group)

(FY) 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021
Comparative Water Usage
Per Unit of Net Sales
(Per Unit of Revenue)
84.9 90.0 82.5 77.9 77.1 82.4 71.7
  1. * Per unit of net sales until fiscal 2019, as Japanese GAAP was used until then, and per unit of revenue from fiscal 2020 onwards, as International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) have been adopted since then.

Click here for the main initiatives for CSR Guideline 3, “Safety, Accident Prevention, and Environmental Preservation” in CSR Roadmap 2022.