Teijin bares first SuMPO EPD registration for virgin plastics in Japan

Teijin Limited, in coordination with Canon Inc., has registered its Panlite® polycarbonate (PC) resin products and Multilon® PC alloy resins under the SuMPO EPD, Administered by the Sustainable Management Promotion Organization (SuMPO), a program that verifies environmental information on products using the life cycle assessment (LCA) method. Teijin’s announcement marks the first registration of virgin plastic materials under the SuMPO EPD in Japan.

The SuMPO EPD is a framework that quantitatively discloses environmental information throughout the entire life cycle of registered products in conformance with ISO 14025. This type of framework is becoming more widely adopted to address a key challenge: CO2 emissions data for plastic materials has traditionally relied on industry averages, making it difficult for customer organizations to accurately describe their emissions reduction efforts.

To address this issue, Teijin coordinated with Canon to register actual CO2 emissions data associated with Teijin’s resin materials supplied to Canon. Through coordination with Canon and the adaptation of a calculation rule (Product Category Rule (PCR)) in the SuMPO EPD, a foundation has been established to more accurately reflect suppliers’ emissions‑reduction efforts in CO2 emissions calculations. In addition, the adaptation of standardized a calculation rule (PCR) for the virgin plastic materials category is expected to facilitate efforts to reduce CO2 emissions across the entire supply chain.

Teijin will continue coordinating with customer companies to expand SuMPO EPD registrations of actual CO2 emission data for its resin materials, contributing to emission reduction efforts across supply chains.