10th Oct - Panasonic and 32 other Japanese companies to Share Biodiversity Standards

Panasonic Corp and 32 other companies plan to adopt a shared set of guidelines for assessing the impact of their factories and office buildings on local ecosystems.

This effort, part of a growing movement towards conservation in the private sector, comes amid rising social awareness of how companies treat the environment.

The Japan Business Initiative for Conservation and Sustainable Use of Biodiversity includes architectural firm Takenaka Corp., Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Co., Kao Corp, Ricoh Co. and Teijin Ltd.. It aims to eventually include all of the business world.

The organization has created an 18-category assessment method that assigns corporate facilities a score of up to 100 points. An office or factory can get the full score of 10 points in the category of green space, for example, if at least 40% of the property is covered by vegetation. Other categories assess whether facilities are using local varieties of plants or the right mixture of trees and shrubs.

Panasonic's facilities received 20-something to upwards of 50 points when the standards were applied on a trial basis. The company says the assessment uncovered many areas for improvement, including the slopes of the banks for its artificial ponds.

In addition to taking their own steps to protect the environment, a growing number of companies are pressuring client firms to do the same.

Japan will from Monday host a series of meetings in Nagoya about the Convention on Biological Diversity. Some 8,000 participants from 193 countries and territories will gather to set goals for protecting wildlife and a protocol for distributing profits from plant- and animal-derived products. Parties to the treaty will meet from Oct. 18 to seek a consensus on the goals and the protocol. Prime Minister Naoto Kan is scheduled to speak on the first day of a ministerial conference for treaty states starting Oct. 27.

The world loses about 40,000 varieties of plants and animals through extinction every year, by some estimates. Without effective steps to protect the ecosystems in the next decade, the damage could become irreparable, scientists say.