The Earth Summit in Rio de Janiero did not pass unnoticed among Japanese electronics companies, and big public relations exercises were staged to persuade the press of how green they were. Among those inviting the press in to see their commitment to environmental friendliness was NEC Corp. In March 1990, NEC announced plans to eliminate Chloro-Fluoro-Carbons and Trichlorethane from production processes throughout the company by the end of fiscal 1995 and 1996 respectively. (Japan calls those fiscal 1994 and 1995, but they are the years that end March 31 1995 and 1996). NEC Yamagata, a 100% subsidiary of NEC and one of the main semiconductor producing groups in the company has already eliminated CFCs which were used mainly for cleaning silicon wafers and for surface cleaning before printing of the brand name, following NEC Akita which achieved the goal in February 1990. NEC cites impressive statistics to show that its corporate policies are not destroying the environment. Waribashi (splittable wooden chopsticks reputedly made from pulp from Southeast Asian tropical forests) are banned in company restaurants. About 90% of the one ton of waste paper produced daily at the head office is recycled; in 1990 over 4,000 tons of paper was recycled. A partly-owned subsidiary called Kowa Enterprises handles the recycling of mainframes, printers and other machinery. From 8,000 tons of machinery recycled per year, Kowa Enterprises retrieves precious metals such as gold, iron and aluminium. The main problem for Kowa however is recycling plastics, with a challenging problem of how to extract metals from plastics with current processes still unsolved. Another subsidiary, NEC Environmental Engineering, makes and markets environmental protection systems and devices, ranging from new satellite sensing systems to magnetic-sensitive footpaths for the handicapped. In the latter project, an NEC-developed unit uses ferrite waste which binds to produce an antitoxin which becomes a magnetic alloy useful for sensor applications. Over 400 units have been sold to universities and research laboratories, and the technology is applicable to other metals such as Arsenic, Copper, Zinc and Lead, the company comments.
