Sustainability Files :
Contributing to Realizing a Sustainable Society - Presenting Super GPs for fiscal 2016
Panasonic uses a product assessment system that evaluates the environmental impacts of our products and services starting at the planning and design stages. Based on our criteria, we accredit our products and services that achieved high environmental performance as Green Products (GPs). Among these GPs, we define as strategic GPs those products that help speed up the shift to a sustainable society, by having an industry top-class environmental performance that reduces environmental impact, or that reduce environmental impact through their promotion and dissemination, or that reduce environmental impact on a specific region, or support measures to address environmental impact. On top of this, those products and services that make a major breakthrough in environmental performance or create new trends to help realize a sustainable society are accredited as Super GPs. Seventeen products have been certified by FY2015 since the Super GP system was introduced in FY2002.
The following products were selected as Super GPs for FY2016. The below are introductions of the products, along with comments from the members of the business divisions.
High-reliability, Pb 0% ADDED Zinc Carbon battery: establishing environmentally conscious technology beyond the barrier of mass production
Zinc carbon batteries have a long history and are widely used worldwide, in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Originally, in order to maintain quality and get a better performance, these batteries utilized mercury, cadmium and lead, all of which impact severely on the environment. Panasonic managed to eliminate mercury in 1989 and cadmium in 1991. But the difficulties in mass production of unleaded batteries involving the strength and erosion resistance of zinc battery cans prevented the development of no-added-lead product for a long time.
Even so, Panasonic, mindful of the increasingly stricker environmental regulations worldwide, and the increasing environmental awareness of its customers, kept on trying to develop a zinc can with no added lead. After having tried out one innovation after another, from selection of alternative materials and the combination ratio with zinc to zinc can processing methods, an independent technology achieving both good performance and mass productivity was successfully established in 2012.
The High-reliability, Pb 0% ADDED Zinc Carbon batteries commercially realized by these efforts are now on sale in more than 100 countries and regions globally.
Chiaki Kidani
Director,
Fumio Kato
General Manager,
Energy Device Business Division
Automotive & Industrial Systems Company
We worked to develop and to introduce High-reliability, Pb 0% ADDED Zinc Carbon battery based on the concept of utilizing our advantage in having production sites across the globe to contribute to lowering environmental impacts by spreading the no-added-lead technology worldwide.
In addition to Panasonic's own eco mark on the product, certified environmental labels from third parties are also attached, giving our customers a value inexpressible by the performance or price. Much support for our efforts to lower environmental impacts also comes from store operators. In cooperation with various national governments and organizations, we are working to spread the use of eco-conscious dry-cell batteries. In order to bring this product to more customers than ever, we intend to expand our production structure and to develop technology to further reduce environmental impacts.
LED high-ceiling lighting and LED flood light projector: flexibly allowing adoption of LEDs for already-installed lights to help boost energy conservation
Metal halide lamps and mercury lamps are used to give many types of light to meet the different needs of customers and installation locations, such as flood light projectors used in athletic fields or school grounds and high ceiling lights in gymnasiums or factories. The problem with replacing to LEDs for these lighting applications is the lack of a sufficient lineup in the market to reproduce the lighting environments given by the existing lights.
Previously, flood light projectors and high ceiling lights used a configuration where the light sources and fixtures were combined. LED high-ceiling lighting and LED flood light projector (modular types), on the other hand, combine with an LED module, to realize a lineup of multiple types of lighting, light distribution and product life, enabling the optimum energy conserving solutions finely matched to the existing lighting equipment. LED flood light projectors equivalent to HID1000, for example, have 50% less power consumption.* These make a major contribution to saving energy in lighting in sports facilities and other venues.
*Comparison of HID1000 flood light projector (multi-halogen lamp S-type 1000W) YAX56565K and lamp MF1000B/BH-SC x 1, and LED module type (equivalent to a multi-halogen lamp S-type 1000W) NNY24626 LF2.
Manager
Lighting Business Division
Lighting Equipment Business Unit
Eco Solutions Company
The expenses and time required for developing LED versions of flood light projectors and high ceiling lights proved to be a tough hurdle. Introducing modular design enabled these problems to be overcome. This allowed a major expansion of the product lineup, increasing by 60% the percentage of LED flood light projectors and high ceiling lights for Panasonic over the last two years. This is proving a boost to a market-wide shift to LEDs.
Renovations of major sports facilities are underway toward the 2019 Rugby World Cup to be held in Japan, and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. We will continue to work to make the modules themselves more efficient and to lighten them to further reduce environmental impacts, as well as developing wavelength control technology and light distribution control technology to provide the very best in lighting for sports facilities.
