Environmental Management Environmental Sustainability Report 2005

Environment-friendly Production (5)

[5] Environmental Investment and Environmental Accounting

Environmental Investment From 2 to 5 billion yen have been invested annually to refurbish equipment and improve their functions to lower the environmental impact. Over 20 billion yen has been spent annually on facilities and other maintenance costs. These investments have enabled Kobe Steel to implement multipronged environmental measures. Furthermore, in order to reduce the number of processes and thoroughly recover exhaust heat, Kobe Steel has implemented various energy-saving capital investments. Environmental Measures: Total Maintenance Cost (Parent Company Only) Environmental Measures: Total Investment (Parent Company Only)   Energy-Saving Measures: Total Investment (Parent Company Only) Environmental Accounting Kobe Steel's environmental conservation cost in fiscal 2004 consisted of approximately 2.4 billion yen for capital investment and approximately 24.6 billion yen for various expenditures. Roughly 38% of total expenses were for air pollution prevention, 15% for water pollution prevention, and 39% for by-product and waste treatment. As these figures show, environmental measures and recycling costs accounted for a large part of the total expense. The expenditure for environment-friendly product development and R&D to reduce the environmental impact of production processes accounted for approximately 1.2% of the total expenditures or 300 million yen. Environmental investment and expenses (unit: billion yen) Category Capital investment Expense Environmental measures Air pollution prevention 17.8 93.7 Water pollution prevention 37.1 Resource recycling By-product and waste treatment 6.4 - Environmental conservation Energy-saving measures - 96.6 Management activities Development of environmental management system, ISO 14001 certification - - Monitoring and measurement of environmental burden 2.2 Personnel expenses for environmental management system 5.8 R&D Eco-products, reduction of the environmental burden on production processes - 3.0 Societal activities Reforestation, support for environmental groups, advertising - 2.1 Others SOx tax - 5.2 Total 24.2 245.7