Kyowa Hakko Kogyo Co., Ltd. (President: Dr. Tadashi Hirata) published first a booklet "Health, Safety, and the Environment 1999" (12 pages in A4 letter size in Japanese and English) incorporating its thinking and approach to preserving health, safety, and the environment.

  This booklet describes Kyowa Hakko's basic policies and guidelines for action on the environment and safety as well as environment- and safety-related investments, environmental protection activities such as reducing industrial waste (recycling), preventing water contamination, air-pollution control, preventing global warming (reducing energy consumption), PRTR (pollutant release and transfer register), etc., and activities for ensuring health and safety, development of technologies and products that preserve the environment, etc.

  In describing the volume of emissions having the environmental impact and others, actual figures were used instead of indexes to show the results at Kyowa Hakko more concretely.
  Particularly in the paragraph on "PRTR", we voluntarily disclosed the volume of emissions of the 12 air pollutants (Kyowa Hakko handling and releasing 6 of them) of which the Japan Chemical Industry Association (JCIA) is placing a priority on reducing usage. Kyowa Hakko has already significantly exceeded JCIA targets (achieving a 30% reduction from 1995 levels by fiscal 1999).
  In the paragraph on "Environment- and Safety-Related Investments", Kyowa Hakko's cumulative capital investment in environment- and safety-related facilities and the cumulative operating costs since fiscal 1974 are shown as the environment- and safety-related cost. For the most recent 10-year period, Kyowa Hakko's operating costs for environmental facilities have averaged more than ¥3.0 billion annually.

  As one of its Management Guidelines based on its corporate philosophy, Kyowa Hakko has formulated the Environment and Safety policy, "Work to protect the environment and maintain safety and also provide products with consideration of the environment and safety" and places top priority on preserving the environment, safety, and people's health (Responsible Care).
  Kyowa Hakko's Hofu Plant received the international standard for environmental management systems, "ISO 14001" certification, in July 1999 and all other 7 plants are scheduled to obtain this certification in fiscal 2000.