Honda extends green purchasing guidelines to cover global operations

In 2009, Honda implemented a green purchasing policy extending right through its supplier matrix in Japan. Now it's set to go worldwide...
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Honda has announced plans to extend the green purchasing guidelines introduced in Japan in 2009 to cover its operations around the world.

The guidelines, formulated with the company's supplier network, extend its capacity to audit in ever finer detail its own environmental footprint in keeping with ISO 14001 environmental management standards. The guidelines extend past primary suppliers through multiple degrees of separation along its supply chain.

At its local headquarters in Melbourne, the company runs regular audits to ensure it remains compliant not just with the ISO standards but its own recycling and waste management programs. These include exensive recycling of office paper and plastics, mobile phones and other electronics that would otherwise end up in landfill, and transport and warehouse materials.

Last year saw 32.5 tonnes of timber pallets converted to mulch for use in public recreational areas. Hundreds of mobile phone handsets and other electronic equipment went to electronics and computer recycling specialist MRI Australia along with 12kg of alkaline batteries and hundreds of fluorescent tubes.

The company's national parts warehouse invoicing system has also gone paperless with the introduction of barcoding, cutting paper use by an estimated 700,000 pages a year.  It has also embarked on a program with outdoor advertising specialist Adshel to recycle backlit poster skins used in bus shelters and the like - they end up as milk crates, compost bins and worm farms. For its brochures, the company has shifted to paper stock comprising an 80:20 mix of post consumer fibre and new pulp derived from sustainably managed forests, manufactured by an ISO 14001 certified mill and certified chlorine free.

The guiding principles behind the policy date back to 1992, when Honda released what amounted to an environmental mission statement to which it has tied its strategies and activities since:


"We should pursue our daily business interests under the following principles:

- We will strive to recycle materials and conserve natural resources and energy at every stage of our products' life cycle - from research, design, production and sales, to service and disposal.

- We will strive to minimize and find appropriate methods to dispose of waste and contaminants that are produced through the use of our products, and in every stage of the life cycle of these products.

- As both a member of the company and society, each associate will focus on the importance of making efforts to preserve human health and the global environment, and will do his or her part to ensure that the company as a whole acts responsibly.

- We will consider the influence that our corporate activities have on the regional environment and society, and endeavor to improve the social standing of the company."




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