The impacts of climate change, including abnormal weather patterns, are growing each year, and efforts to prevent global warming have become a key issue for the international community. The Ono Group recognizes its corporate social responsibility for the environment, which is why we promote environmentally friendly activities in all stages of our business activities in order to preserve the rich global environment.
Under the corporate philosophy of “Dedicated to the Fight Against Disease and Pain,” the Ono Group contributes to the realization of a sustainable and prosperous society by creating innovative medicines and working on solving global environmental issues such as climate change.
ONO has established a medium- to long-term environmental challenge vision for 2050, named “Environmental Challenge Ono Vision (ECO VISION 2050)” to realize a sustainable society in 2019.
In recent years, the global environmental issues including climate change and other issues have become serious. In the future of 2050, it is expected that people's healthy and sound life will be threatened due to various threats such as water and food shortages, increase of new diseases, devastating natural disasters and so on.
In order to promote the creation of a healthy and sound society through the discovery and development of innovative pharmaceutical products under the corporate philosophy to be "Dedicated to the Fight against Disease and Pain", it is important that we recognize that our business activities are supported by a sound global environment and that we will strengthen our activities toward the resolution of environmental challenge. We believe that such activities are not only our corporate responsibility for the environment, but also lead to build the foundation for sustainable business activities.
We will challenge to reduce the environmental burden in anticipation of 2050 based on the ECO VISION 2050 so that people can welcome a healthy and sound society.
Based on our medium- to -long-term environmental vision, ECO VISION 2050, we have set respective goals and taken initiatives to realize a decarbonized society, a water recycling society, and a resource recycling society. Furthermore in 2023, we reviewed our medium- to long-term environmental targets in order to strengthen and accelerate our efforts to address various global environmental issues. Moving forward, we will promote activities to achieve these environmental targets.
We engage in environment-related education and awareness-raising activities for all Ono Group employees with the aim of familiarizing them with global environmental issues and encouraging them to take individual action.
As for divisions that have a great impact on the environment, we conduct employee education and awareness-raising activities at each division.
Our Fujiyama Plant and Yamaguchi Plant conduct environmental education and training once a year to all employees at each plant. In FY2023, we thoroughly made our Global Environment Policy and Medium- to Long-term Environmental Targets known to all employees, and conducted education and training on proper waste management. In addition, each factory is taking its own approach to raise awareness of environmental conservation, including education on the factory's internal management system and activities for environmental targets set for the factory as a whole and for each of the organization's smallest units. Furthermore, the Environmental Committee, which meets monthly at each factory, confirms and discusses matters such as revisions to laws and regulations, changes to environmental management systems, and reports on environmental activities conducted by each organization, and we have established a system whereby the contents of such confirmations and discussions are shared by the Environmental Committee members with all employees at each plant. Moreover, the CMC and Production Division, to which employees of both plants also belong, held an e-learning course on the Energy Conservation Act (to which employees can optionally participate in), and more than 90% of employees have taken the course.
In addition, we distribute the information to all employees via our company’s intranet and internal SNS to share and raise awareness of our goals, achievements, and initiatives related to climate change, water & resource cycles, and pharmaceutical packaging. Employees were very interested in the distributed content, and we received many responses, including suggestions for future activities.
In order to resolve natural environmental issues, including climate change, we are accelerating our efforts to reduce our environmental impact by participating in initiatives that align with Ono’s way of thinking and direction, participating in the activities of industry group committees, and working to lobby the government through industry groups, etc. When it comes to participating in initiatives and other activities, we consider consistency with our business objectives, focus areas, and business activities, and regularly conduct careful examinations on whether there are no major contradictions between industry associations and our company's approach to environmental conservation. If there is a large discrepancy, we even consider withdrawing from the initiative, etc. The environment-related initiatives that we participate in are as follows:
Ono’s greenhouse gas reduction targets were certified by the SBTi in June 2019.
The SBTi is an initiative that supports and certifies companies to set science-based targets.
We expressed its support for the TCFD recommendations in October 2019.
The TCFD was established by the Financial Stability Board at the request of G20 to improve and increase the reporting of climate-related information and how financial institutions should respond.
We participated in the TCFD Consortium in October 2019.
The TCFD Consortium was established as a forum for companies, financial institutions, and other organizations supporting the TCFD recommendations to work together to promote initiatives, and to discuss initiatives on how companies can effectively disclose climate-related financial reports and how those reports can be leveraged to encourage appropriate investment decisions by financial institutions and other organizations.
We participated in the “Water Project” in October 2019. The "Water Project" is a public-private partnership project launched after the "Basic Law on the Water Cycle" enacted in 2014, which states that governments and companies should work together to protect the water cycle in Japan.
We participated in RE100 in June 2020. RE100 is an international initiative, aiming to source 100% of the electricity consumed in its business activities with renewable energy, which is operated by The Climate Group, an international environmental NGO which promotes climate change countermeasures, in partnership with CDP, an international NPO, that encourages companies to disclose and manage environmental impact information.
We expressed our support in April 2022 for the GX (Green Transformation) League Basic Concept, which was announced by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI). The GX League is a forum for companies to collaborate with companies, government and academia which take on the challenge of GX with a view to achieving carbon neutrality and social change in 2050.
In October 2023, Ono endorsed Japan’s Ministry of the Environment’s Decokatsu initiative (“Decokatsu” in Japanese is an abbreviation, created by the Ministry of the Environment, which combines “DE” for decarbonization, “ECO,” and “Katsu,” which is the Japanese word for activity and lifestyle) and declared its commitment to the initiative. Decokatsu is a new national movement in Japan that strongly supports changes in the behaviors and lifestyles of citizens and consumers in order to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, and meet reduction targets by FY2030.
