FY2012 CSR Website CSR > Site Reports > Worksites > Kawasaki Plant

The Kawasaki Plant is located in Yako in southeastern Kawasaki City, Kanagawa
Prefecture. If you take the Keikyu Daishi Line and get off at Kojimashinden Station, thelast stop on the line, you will notice the ZEON logo on a tall building nearby. This isZEON’s R&D Building No. 10, the highest-standing building in Yako. The Kawasaki
Plant is situated next-door.
While the name Yako (literally “night light”) seems to suggest the bright lights andtorches of the Keihin Industrial Zone, this interpretation is in fact incorrect. The true

Aerial view of the Kawasaki Plant

origin of the word relates to the construction of the Kawasaki Daishi temple, and comes from a phrase meaning“ocean emitting a strange light at night." Kawasaki Daishi is said to have originated at a time when, long ago, afisherman, heeding the instruction of a Buddhist monk who appeared in his dream, cast his net where light wasshining and pulled out a small statue of Kobo-Daishi, the founder of the Shingon school of Buddhism. The Kawasaki
Plant was built here in 1959 and, for over half a century since, has built mutual relationships of trust with the localresidents. For example, its neighborhood cleanups, summer festivals, and discussions with local residents atneighborhood association meetings have helped the Kawasaki Plant to quietly blend in and function as an intimate
and integral part of the local community.

The Kawasaki Plant makes various efforts to increase interaction between itself and local residents as part of its
stated mission to be an open and transparent manufacturing operation. The first step in achieving that goal is forevery employee at the plant to maintain a clean and proper public image. For that purpose, the Kawasaki Plant
Group Leader Committee instructs employees on practicing basic social manners, such as not reading one’s cell
phone while walking, not jaywalking, and not smoking while walking down the street.

1. Reducing toxic chemical emissions
The Kawasaki Plant is working to reduce emissions of butadiene and acrylonitrile, the main materials in our products,
by installing recovery equipment. Stabilizing operations and improving the operational rate of recovery systems has
allowed us to increase the amount of acrylonitrile we process. As a result, atmospheric emissions of butadiene andacrylonitrile in fiscal 2011 were 2.6 tons and 12 tons, respectively. We will continue to improve our technologies sothat someday we can achieve zero emissions.

-1-FY2012 CSR Website CSR > Site Reports > Worksites > Kawasaki Plant

Substances subject to PRTR law

2. Reducing industrial waste
We have maintained efforts throughout the plant to reduce the volume of plant-generated industrial waste byseparating it for collection and reusing or recycling it (including heat recovery). The volume of waste sent to landfills
in fiscal 2011 was 0.4 tons, again less than 1 ton as in the previous year, as a result of our diligence in reducing
waste and introducing facilities to improve and stabilize waste treatment. In fiscal 2012, we will continue to reduce
industrial waste through separation and recycling and by reducing waste.

Amount of Waste to Landfill-2-FY2012 CSR Website CSR > Site Reports > Worksites > Kawasaki Plant

3. Reducing air and water pollution
By carefully managing the waste we put in our incinerator we have steadily decreased nitrogen oxides (NO x), carbon
monoxide (CO), soot, and other atmospheric emissions from our operations.
We are also decreasing our environmental impact on water quality by reducing nitrogenous compounds in waste
liquid and improving removal rates by ensuring that our treatment facilities are operating efficiently. We aredetermined to improve our technologies to bring about less total nitrogen discharge and better removal rates.

CO2 emissions

SOx and NOx emissions-3-FY2012 CSR Website CSR > Site Reports > Worksites > Kawasaki Plant

Total effluent waste water discharge, COD emissions, total nitrogen discharge and total phosphorus discharge

4. Saving resources and energy
Continuing from the previous year, in fiscal 2011 we worked to improve technologies to make our co-generation*systems work more efficiently. Responding to power restrictions in Japan, we also reduced peak power consumption
by adjusting the production timing for products requiring higher energy use and revising our annual production. To
enforce energy conservation measures on a daily basis, we sent employees to patrol our facilities and make surethermostats were kept at 28℃ and lights not in use were turned off, among other inspections. Everyone at thefactory was especially vigilant during the more energy-intense summer months.
* Co-generation
A new type of energy supply system that uses waste heat from internal combustion engines, external combustion engine, and other sources to extract power, heat, andrefrigeration while improving overall energy efficiency.

Total amount of energy and Unit energy consumption index-4-FY2012 CSR Website CSR > Site Reports > Worksites > Kawasaki Plant

5. Environmental Data
Kawasaki Plant

FY2007

FY2008FY2009FY2010FY2011

28,886

21,902

21,75826,61323,054

4.5

3.1

2.3

4.8

2.6

13,030

9,576

9,556

12,034

10,670

20

14

12

15

12

58,02644,085

44,101

51,781

46,186

31

27

21

30

26

33,34934,50030,163

44,13247,718

5,871

4,641

3,136

5,315

5,383

392

118

13

0.4

0.4

CO2 emissions (tons)

39,42031,03033,90036,47839,972

SOx emissions (tons)

1.0

1.0

0.6

0.7

0.1

17

17

18

108---

2,575

2,963

1,970

1,598

1,602

1,836

1,793

58

37

35

41

40

1.0

0.8

0.2

0.1

0.2

93

60

74

93

89

19,982

15,82915,167

16,23916,526

91%

97%

92%

78%

91%

99,68073,58774,803

94,34081,790

Butadiene consumption (tons)
Toxic substances

Butadiene emissions (tons)
Acrylonitrile consumption (tons)
Acrylonitrile emissions (tons)

Substances
subject to PRTR
law

Industrial waste

Atmosphericemissions

Consumption (tons)
Amount emitted (tons)
Amount generated (before volume reduction)(tons)
Amount generated (after volume reduction)(tons)
Amount sent to landfill (tons)

NOx emissions (tons)
Water resources (Industrial water + Ground water +3Waterworks) consumption (1,000 m )Total effluent waste water discharge
3(1,000 m )COD emissions (tons)
Waste water
Total phosphorus discharge (tons)
Total nitrogen discharge (tons)
EnergyTotal consumption (crude oil equivalent, kL)
Unit consumption index (1990 = 100)

Production of PDR equivalent (tons)

In line with ZEON’s Mid-Term Management Plan, SZ-20, including the Enterprise Blueprint for 2020: “ZEON creates
the future today through the power of chemistry,” the Kawasaki Plant strives to produce the world’s highest-quality
products and supply a steady stream of those products to customers.
Quality as stated here includes cost, quantity, delivery period, and reliability. Consistently providing the highquality that our customers require is both the mission and raison d’être of the Kawasaki Plant, which takes
satisfaction in being harmoniously integrated in urban surroundings. We also believe that our employees’ pride in
producing the best products in the world can be a driving force for further quality improvements.

VOICE

Toward Higher Quality and More Stable Production

In its over 50 years of operations, the Kawasaki Plant has supplied its customers
with oil-resistant synthetic rubber, used in key automotive components, andsynthetic latex, used in coated papers, nonwoven fabrics, and rubber gloves. We
see the stable production of high-quality products as an important requirement fordelivering these products to our customers for many decades to come.
In fiscal 2012 we will further advance these efforts and work to enhance ourcapacity in processes that are critical to product quality. In other words, we will

Toshiaki Saya, Kawasaki Plant Manager

reduce variations and aim for quality right in the middle of our standards. To this end, we will identify factors that lead-5-

FY2012 CSR Website CSR > Site Reports > Worksites > Kawasaki Plant

to changes in attributes critical to quality and modify our production equipment and revise manufacturing conditions
to ensure that those factors are controlled. Through these efforts we will create systems with which anyone following
a standardized method can easily produce products with consistent quality. To reduce quality variations between
product lots, we will improve management of raw material quality and seek to build flexible production systems
where seasonal and other variations have no impact on quality.

1. Sharing electricity generated on-site
The nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in 2011 gave rise to public concern that a power
shortage would hit the Tohoku and Kanto region. As a result, the Kawasaki Plant, like other businesses, faced a 15%
power use restriction instituted by a power restriction order based on Article 27 of Japan’s Electricity Business Act.
The Kawasaki Plant was required to reduce electricity use together with two other plants at one of our affiliatedcompanies based on a joint restriction scheme*1. It also upgraded its on-site generation equipment by the end ofJune and fed electricity into the TEPCO grid during restriction hours (during the day on weekdays) in July throughSeptember. Consequently, the plant not only met its reduction requirements but also supplied approximately
1,600kW of electricity on average throughout the duration of the power restriction order. This is enough to power
1,300 average-sized homes.*2*1.Scheme for Joint Restriction of Electricity Use
A program in which multiple business sites can work together to meet their total power restriction requirements as stipulated by Article 27 of the Electricity Business Act. The
scheme allows individual sites to miss their reduction targets as long as the total reduction requirement for all sites is met.
*2.Calculated based on figures provided in the “Menu of Power Saving Measures for Households” by METI’s Electricity Supply -Demand Emergency Response Headquarters

2. Becoming a plant that is open and transparent
To stay open and transparent as a manufacturing operation, the Kawasaki Plant
invites schools, companies, business associations, and other groups to visit andtake a tour. Recently, overseas visitors have come from China, Taiwan, andThailand. By providing information about our products and our environmental andsafety activities through these visits, we are doing our best to help the public better
understand our operations.
A plant tour group in fiscal 2011

A plant tour group in fiscal 2011-6-