Sony Announces 'Green Management 2020,' Targets No Impact on Environment

Sony has announced a new initiative dubbed ‘Green Management 2020’ that will take effect from fiscal year 2016 through 2020. Under this new plan, Sony hopes to reduce its carbon footprint and the amount of power that its devices utilize. By decade’s end, Sony plans to have those devices be 30% more efficient. But that’s not all; Sony even has greater ambitions which would ultimately see the company have a “zero environmental footprint” throughout all stages of its product lifecycles and business.

Check out Sony’s Green Management 2020 vision details after the break.

Sony had outlined the following three ways to help achieve its goal

Formulate targets and implement initiatives that leverage the distinctive characteristics of Sony’s businesses, from Electronics to Entertainment. Among these, reduce annual energy consumption by an average of 30%^* in electronics products, and in entertainment, continue to look to use its contents to raise awareness of sustainability issues and inspire environmentally-conscious actions.
Enhance efforts to reduce Sony’s environmental footprint across its entire value chain, including manufacturing partners and suppliers, by calling on them to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and water consumption.
Accelerate the use of renewable energy.

As for its products, Sony will incorporate

environmental considerations right into the initial product design and development stages, and substantially reduce the energy consumption of its TVs and other major electronics products.

Besides their products, Sony is hoping that impact from their factories will also achieve a reduced impact and a 5% reduction in GHG emissions by fiscal year 2020 across all of its manufacturing and non-manufacturing sites. Sony plans to even have its new environment practices extend to its manufacturing partners and component suppliers by monitoring their figures for CO₂ emissions, water usage, and waste.

These goals come after some nice milestones from Sony where in Japan, they jointly established a Green Energy Certificate System with an electric power company in 2001. In fact in Europe, Sony production sites have been running on 100% renewable electricity since 2008 but the company realizes that it has a long way to go, especially when you consider the many different branches of Sony which include electronics, Pictures & Music, PlayStation, and more.

That’s why Sony has a more modest plan of having zero impact upon the environment by 2050. To help them stay on track, Sony will also continue to participate in the WWF’s Climate Savers Program and even hopes to to raise awareness of sustainability issues and inspire environmentally-conscious actions by leveraging divisions like Sony Pictures.

I don’t often get a chance to report happier news from Sony so it’s great to see them inspire to be a greener company.