Communicate in-house
environmental volunteer activities

We engage in various activities aimed at further raising the environmental consciousness of our employees, including initiatives to protect biodiversity and form pleasing landscapes. We also are collaborating with the NPO Chiba University Students Committee for Environmental Management System to protect community nature areas and to clean business sites and seashores.

Responsible ship dismantling
and resource recovery

Ship dismantling enables the recovery of metals that can be recycled into new products and services and provides work and community economic activity. When disposing of our vessels, we follow our own environmental impact assessment checklist to select dismantling yards in consideration
of occupational health and safety and environmental performance.

Participating in
the Plastic Smart campaign

“K” LINE participates in the Ministry of the Environment’s Plastic Smart
campaign promoting intelligent corporate use of plastic. For the campaign, we are collecting and reselling reusable bottle caps from
used PET bottles. This eliminates the CO2 emissions that would be produced when incinerating them, and the funds raised from the sales are presented to charities.

Through measures such as use of iPads and paper-saving printer settings (double-sided printing and printing two pages per each side of paper), we are reducing our use of office paper. We also separate office waste into 12 different types and try to recycle it into resources whenever possible.

We employ a system for office purchases whereby priority is given to purchasing products that comply with the Act on Promoting Green Purchasing or are EcoMark-certified. We sum up the amount of expenses for purchasing goods and the ratio of green purchases each month and distribute the results widely throughout the Company in order to further increase consciousness about reducing costs and purchasing eco-friendly goods/products.

On September 1, 2015, our office started to collect PET bottle caps which had been disposed of as plastic garbage every day. The purpose of this activity is reducing CO_{2} emissions from the incineration of PET bottle caps; and making the activity a help for social contribution by donating the proceeds from sale of PET bottle caps to charity.

Results of this activity of handing over the PET bottle caps to Minato-ku Recycling business Cooperative in the past are as follows:

The massive amount of plastic waste flowing into the sea has become a worldwide issue.

In order to maintain the beautiful blue and fertile oceans, we participate in “Plastics Smart Forum” conducted by the Ministry of the Environment.

※Plastics Smart Forum

The Plastics Smart Forum is a platform set up to promote dialogue and interaction among companies and organizations concerned about marine plastic waste, by supporting the expansion and activation of each initiative so as to promote the “Plastics Smart ” approach nationwide toward the elimination of marine plastic waste.

Plastics Smart Website: http://plastics-smart.env.go.jp/en/

Iron and various other types of metals are used in ships. The metals collected after dismantling a ship are valuable resources and can be recycled into new products and used for new services to support local lives and the growth of employment. The “K” LINE Group conducts responsible dismantling and recycling of resources also in the ship scrapping stage. When we dismantle a ship, we inspect ship recycling yards and use our unique “K” LINE check-list to carry out environmental impact assessment to check whether the work is being carried out safely, whether substances that affect the human body or the environment are being properly collected, whether the dismantling process has an impact on the surrounding environment and so on.
A pilot model project to build safe and efficient “advanced country-model” ship recycling system (the Muroran Project) was launched under the initiative of Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. In 2010, “K” LINE joined the project and conducted a ship dismantling demonstration experiment on its owned ship, the New York Highway. Based on the knowledge yielded by this project and on numerous past experiences in ship dismantling, we are also putting efforts into projects that follow the Ship Recycling Convention adopted by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) in 2009 ahead of it coming into effect.