The DOWA group strives to contribute to building a sustainable society by reducing consumption of limited natural resources and by recycling used resources.
In our environmental management & Recycling business, we promote thermal recycling that uses heat from burning wastes to generate electricity. We strive to improve pre-processing technologies of maintaining ingredients of recycling materials at a constant level and to operate our thermal power generation properly.
In our smelting and refining business, we are strengthening recovery of rare metals such as nickel, tin, antimony and gallium and recycling of zinc. For the amount of recycled materials in of the total amount of raw materials for production, see "Total Material Input: Raw materials usage".
< Changes of Annual Waste Power Generation >
Thermal Recycling
In 2011 the total amount of thermal recycling within the DOWA group accounted for 416,000 tons (409,000 t in Japan, 7,000 t abroad), a slight increase from the previous year. The amount of waste power used in Japan was 66 GWh, while heat that was recovered and used besides power generation was 746 TJ, a slight decrease from previous year respectively. This was mainly due to the reduction of waste power generation in Kosaka Smelting & Refining.
< Changes of Annual Waste Heat Recovery >
Material Recycling
The amount of material recycling within the DOWA group was 140,000 tons (138,000 t in Japan and 2,000 t abroad), a decrease of 15% from the previous year. This was due to the decrease of polluted soil disposal by 25% from the previous year, which is the essence of material recycling.
< Details of Material Recycling (in Japan) >
*The calorific value of the DOWA group is only a reference value because some values are not measured according to the method shown in the Measurement Act
*CO2 is calculated by multiplying grid-purchased electricity, purchased fossil fuel consumption and amount of accepted wastes by emission factor set forth in the Act on Promotion of Global Warming Countermeasures. However, CO2 emission derived from accepted wastes does not always correspond to the value submitted to administration authorities, as part of the prerequisites used in the method for this report differ from that for the reports to administration authorities. As segregation of wastes differs between Japan and other countries, it is difficult to set a proper emission factor to such emission. Therefore CO2 emission derived from wastes shown here are only from our business establishments in Japan.
