Carbon free travel
Sydney - 11 April, 2008
Sony to offset carbon emissions through Landcare’s CarbonSMART initiative
(High resolution images available-see below)
Sony Australia today announced that it will offset carbon emissions generated by its corporate car
fleet and air travel, through Landcare Australia’s CarbonSMART initiative.
“Sony, as a global corporation, invests heavily in R&D aimed at reducing its environmental footprint. It
is important to us that we carry this through at the local market level. Joining the Landcare
CarbonSMART program is one of Sony Australia’s behind-the-scenes initiatives to contribute to
sustainable environmental management. We see this as upholding our responsibility to our staff,
retail partners and customers,” said Carl Rose, Managing Director at Sony Australia.
“Sony Australia and Landcare Australia have had a working partnership for the last six years, so we
have confidence in the integrity of their carbon trading program.”
CarbonSMART generates carbon credits from biodiversity plantings that are sold to organisations with
a commitment to offset their greenhouse gas emissions. These carbon credits enable CarbonSMART
to provide a financial incentive for landholders to maintain eligible vegetation on their land, by
calculating the amount of carbon absorbed by the vegetation. Initiated by Landcare, CarbonSMART
was launched in March 2007 and now operates in all states and territories.
“Landcare CarbonSMART has been developed in response to a growing demand from landholders
and corporates to work together to offset carbon emissions,” said Brian Scarsbrick, CEO of Landcare
Australia. “Consumers and governments are driving companies to be more accountable for the
environmental impact of their operations, in particular greenhouse gas emissions. It is extremely
encouraging that Sony is taking an important step in the fight against global warming and joining this
initiative.”
“Sony Australia’s corporate vehicle fleet emissions are calculated to be around 885 tonnes of carbon,
and its air travel 2184 tonnes, per year. Offsetting this equates to investing in about 600 hectares of
native biodiversity plantings. To put this in context, Sony’s contribution is securing the life of the
equivalent of 18,000 tennis courts worth of native forest.” said Brian Scarsbrick.
-ENDS-
Contact:
Sacha Dench, Landcare Australia: (02) 9412 1040/ 0403 814 393/ sacha@landcareaustralia.com.au
FURTHER INFORMATION:
About Landcare Australia: Landcare is a uniquely Australian partnership between the community,
government and business to 'do something practical' about protecting and repairing our environment.
More than 4,000 volunteer community landcare groups - including bushcare and urban landcare,
rivercare, coastcare and sustainable agriculture groups – are tackling land degradation in every
corner of Australia. For more information visit www.landcareonline.com.
About CarbonSMART: CarbonSMART provides the link between the corporate and the landholder to
make possible the planting of trees that store carbon as the trees grow, in order to offset corporation’s
carbon emissions. This is done through the NSW Greenhouse Gas Abatement Scheme that allows for
the formal allocation and trade of ‘carbon credits’. For more information visit
About Sony: Sony Corporation is a leading manufacturer of audio, video, communications and
information technology products for the consumer and professional markets. Sony Australia Limited is
a wholly owned subsidiary of the Sony Corporation of Japan. With a wide range of products across
three main segments, consumer products, broadcast & professional and information technology
products, Sony has become a leading electronics company in Australia.
Sony and the environment: A few of the facts, at a glance:
Sony believes that climate change is one of the most critical global issues of the 21st century. Sony is
devoting extensive efforts to reducing greenhouse gas emissions in all of its business activities. It is
not only making use of new technologies to reduce energy consumption by its products and direct
CO2 emissions from its sites, but also pursuing a number of other efforts, including forming
partnerships with nongovernmental organisations, actively promoting the introduction of renewable
forms of energy and participating in emissions trading programs.
In December 2007, Sony established an industry-first, in-house system for regenerating plastic
(polystyrene) waste from previously sold Sony CRT TVs, and polystyrene foam packaging materials
into high quality, flame-retardant polystyrene that can be reused as parts in its BRAVIA LCD TVs.
This in-house regeneration delivers two significant advantages by reducing the use of new materials
and lowering production costs.
Globally, TV energy consumption has been a priority factor in Sony product design for many years
combined with recycled and reduced packaging and care over the type and quality of materials used
in the manufacturing process. All these elements have been prioritised to minimise the overall
environmental footprint of the product.
All models in Sony’s current BRAVIA range already have frugal power requirements. Standby
consumption of the majority of BRAVIA models are 0.3Watts (the only exception is the 70” XBR which
is 0.4W). In fact, in Europe the BRAVIA D series 40” LCD TV recently won the 2007/2008 European
Green Television award from the European Imaging & Sound Association (EISA). This BRAVIA model
was selected for the prestigious accolade by an evaluation team of European academics specialising
in the environmental benchmarking of electronic products. (In Australia, the comparable model is the
BRAVIA KDL-40D3100. Energy consumption for this model in Australia is slightly higher than the
European model due to different tuner specifications.)
In Japan, Sony Group companies have used the "Green Power Certification System", jointly
established by Sony and a power company in Japan, to purchase renewable energy generated at
distantly located facilities since fiscal 2001. In October 2007, Sony agreed a contract to annually
purchase an additional 16 million kWh of wood biomass energy. Combined with its existing contracts,
the annual amount of renewable energy now purchased by the Sony Group in Japan amounts to 36.4
million kWh, making it Japan's largest buyer of renewable energy under this system¹.
1
Information published by Japan Natural Energy Company Limited http://www.natural-e.co.jp/english/index.html
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