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Nitto Denko
About the company
Grade Summary
To the best of our knowledge, there are no hazardous chemicals in Nitto Denko’s product portfolio. However, the company is only awarded two points in the first category, due to the fact that there is no available data for the 90 percent of the company’s production that takes place outside of the EU and US. This low transparency is a big issue for investors, as it makes it hard to do a proper evaluation of the risks connected to the product portfolio. On a positive note, there is no record of Nitto Denko being involved in any major controversies, rendering it all six points in the Lack of Controversies category. These six points really saves the company from being among the very worst performers. In the remaining categories, Nitto Denko’s performance is weak across the board.
Opportunities for improvement
- We can only rank 10 percent of Nitto Denko’s overall production, since the rest takes place outside the EU and US, where there are no reliable and publicly available sources for identifying producers of hazardous chemicals. Informing ChemSec about hazardous chemical production outside the EU and US could raise the company’s score considerably.
- Emission reduction of pollutants is a useful and desired goal. But it doesn’t change the fact that Nitto Denko lacks a chemical management strategy, along with a systematic tool to assess intrinsic hazards of products, the development of safer alternatives, as well as a clear plan for designing and phasing out hazardous ingredients.
- With 0 points for its circularity efforts, Nitto Denko has a steep hill to climb to get on par with its peers. The company fails to even mention circular economy on its website. We would like to see a clear circular strategy, with stringent KPIs and SMART targets for Nitto Denko to develop its own circular products and concepts.
Category breakdown
Nitto Denko produces/uses no highly hazardous substances. However, much about the company’s product portfolio is unknown due to the large production that takes place outside of the EU and US.
Please note that there is no available data for the 90 percent of the company’s production that takes place outside of the EU and US. Lower EU/US production means higher uncertainty with regard to the total production of hazardous chemicals, which will have a negative impact on the company’s score in this category.
Nitto Denko has a method in place to screen and assess the sustainability of its products and includes the intrinsic hazards of ingredients in the screening process. It does not, however, exclude substances with toxic properties from its new products. Nitto Denko does not actively market safer alternatives on its own website, neither on ChemSec Marketplace. The company has no true circular product, process or innovation. Nitto Denko does not use bio-based resources. Nor does it source or treat recycled materials in a sustainable way, which is one of the key elements of a circular economy. Nitto Denko is not actively reducing the hazardous waste it generates.
The Japanese company does not produce only sustainable products, and it does not have a timed phase-out strategy for hazardous substances that go beyond regulatory compliance. It shares chemical safety information on its website and is following a credible code of conduct standard. Nitto Denko responded to ChemSec’s attempts to communicate around its ChemScore ranking. However, the company does not share any information about what kind of chemicals it produces in regions with low regulatory demands for transparency (e.g. Asia). Nitto Denko does not have a circular economy program in place, and it is lacking objective and measurable circular economy targets.
There is only one controversy reported that is connected to Nitto Denko. In July 2015, a fire badly injured an employee in the company’s plant in Toyohasho.
Download Controversies Nitto Denko (PDF, 92 KB)How did we come to this score?
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