Kobe Steel’s Chofu Plant Achieves Zero Emission

Kobe Steel announced on Wednesday that its Chofu Plant in Yamaguchi prefecture, Western Japan, achieved zero emission, which was the first time in the aluminium rolling industry. According to Kobe, the plant became big advantage of money received at 50 million yen in the first half of 2005 from 90 million yen of payment in fiscal 2003 thanks to decline of costs of waste disposal. Kobe said that there would be 140 million yen per year as effect of the improvement. The Chofu Plant is one of the main manufacturing plants in Aluminium Copper Company of Kobe which produces copper sheet strips at about 62,000 tonnes and aluminium extruded products at about 40,000 tonnes. It has promoted reduction of final disposal and recycling earth filling throughout waste volume reduction and establishment of preservation place called “Eco Station” as part of segregation recycling since it obtained ISO14001 certification, regarding its green actions. For example, the plant improved the collection ratio of metal out of aluminum dross by arc furnaces and recycled sludge including copper, tin and aluminium, and made ceramics scrap be valuable resource through change of the method of processing them. As a result, the landfill ratio in October 2004-September 2005 became 0.38%, which was below 1% of the level of zero emission. That is final disposal reduced dramatically to 64 toones through the first half of 2005 from the second half of 2004 although that was 3,300 tonnes in fiscal 2000. Kobe already realized zero emmission at its Kobe and Kakogawa Plants, in Western Japan. The Chofu Plant aims at the ratio at less than 0.1% in fiscal 2006. Further, Kobe group companies plan to achieve zero emmission in the future.