Rengo Co., Ltd. (Head Office: Kita-ku, Osaka; president & CEO: Kiyoshi Otsubo) announces that its Yashio Mill (Yashio City, Saitama Prefecture) has received one of the FY2012 awards for global warming prevention activities granted by the Minister of the Environment. The award was granted in the category of global warming countermeasure implementation due to high evaluation of its environmental measures.

These awards granted by the Minister of the Environment, which constitute part of a package of government measures designed to promote global warming countermeasures, have been granted in December (the global warming prevention month) each year since FY1998, to honor individuals and organizations that have made a clear contribution in this area.

The Yashio Mill has been aggressively promoting environmental activities by setting up the “Teinenpi (Fuel-Efficient) Yashio team,” specializing in global warming countermeasures. The Yashio Mill has also compiled rules for proposal and evaluation of global warming prevention steps for the overall factory and constructed a system to evaluate and implement global warming prevention ideas collected from all departments and employees. This, in addition to promoting transformation in employees’ awareness of environmental issues, has led to progressive reduction in CO2 emissions. The award was received due to high evaluation of the results produced by these efforts.

As well as having switched energy sources from heavy oil to clean processed natural gas at an early stage, the factory uses electricity and thermal energy generated from biomass fuel, which is the use it has given to the residue created from paperboard production processes, and has introduced highly-efficient equipment and implemented a shift to low energy consumption across all production processes. Through these measures, the firm has over many years accumulated a number of environmental initiatives aimed at realizing its “Less Weight, Less Carbon” commitment, which involves lighter, thinner packaging with fewer CO2 emissions.

Going forward too, in addition to continued initiatives to further cut greenhouse gas emissions, Rengo will, bearing in mind its commitment to be kind to both people and the environment, strengthen its environmental initiatives across all business operations.