Rengo Co., Ltd. (Head Office: Kita-ku, Osaka; President & CEO: Kiyoshi Otsubo) announces that it has won a 3Rs Promotion Council President's Prize at the FY2013 3Rs (Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle) promotion merit awards hosted by the 3Rs Promotion Council. The prize was awarded for high evaluations of the efforts by Rengo's Tonegawa Division (Bando-shi, Ibaraki Prefecture) to reduce industrial waste output by introducing biomass incineration facilities (boilers) and to reduce CO2 emissions through heat recovery.

The goal of the 3Rs Promotion Council is to promote recycling through cooperation with the government, consumers, industry, and others. It was founded in 2001 as the Recycling Promotion Council and was renamed the 3Rs Promotion Council in 2002 with the goal of building a recycling-oriented society through the “3 Rs”—reduce, reuse, and recycle. The 3Rs promotion merit awards are presented each year as one aspect of the Council's public awareness and promotion activities.

The installation of biomass incineration facilities (boilers) at the Tonegawa Division makes it possible to use all of the fine wood fiber (paper sludge)—produced through the usage of recovered paper as a raw material in paper making—as biomass energy. This has reduced the amount of waste, the processing of which was previously outsourced, by approximately 25%. Moreover, by collecting the heat that is produced during incineration and effectively utilizing it in the manufacturing process, CO2 emissions can be cut by roughly 6,000 tons per year. This also contributes to measures to mitigate the effects of global warming.

This is the third time Rengo has been awarded the President's Prize. It won a prize in fiscal 2009 for its promotion of lightweight corrugated board and improved usage rate of recovered paper, and in fiscal 2012 for the development of lightweight Less Caliper & Carbon (LCC) containerboard.

With the encouragement of this award, Rengo will work to further improve the environmental performance of its environmentally friendly corrugated packaging. To that end, Rengo will continue to strongly promote the development and widespread use of lighter, thinner packaging with fewer CO2 emissions, based on its key phrase of “Less Weight, Less Carbon.”