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Toray Industries
About the company

Grade summary
Toray Industries produces three SIN List substances, two of which are officially recognised as chemicals of high concern by the EU. However, data is available for less than one fifth of the Tokyo-based company’s production, as the rest takes place outside the EU/US. The company does not have a method in place to screen and assess the sustainability of its products, nor does it have a phase-out strategy for hazardous substances. Toray Industries follows several voluntary standards of good conduct and has not been involved in any major environmental scandals over the last ten years.
Opportunities for improvement
- When it comes to developing safer alternatives, Toray Industries scores zero points. Only four companies in the entire ranking fail to score a single point. The Japanese company should live up to its slogan “Innovation by chemistry”, and use its so-called Green Innovation project to develop safer, less-toxic alternatives and market them publicly.
- Add transparency to the hazardous product portfolio. We can only rank less than a fifth of Toray’s overall production since the rest takes place outside the EU and US. For other regions there are no reliable and publicly available sources for identifying producers of hazardous chemicals. Informing ChemSec of hazardous chemical production outside the EU and US could help raise the company’s score.
- Toray reports that its products contribute to a sustainable world, with wind turbine blades fighting climate change and membranes purifying water. The question is whether these materials are non-hazardous or not? Toray should screen its product portfolio thoroughly for hazardous ingredients and actively work to phase them out.
Category breakdown
Toray Industries produces three SIN List substances, two of which are included on the REACH Candidate List but none on the REACH Authorisation List. The company does not produce any persistent chemicals.
Toray Industries does not have a method in place to screen and assess the sustainability of its products and, therefore, does not investigate the intrinsic hazards of ingredients. The company does not make use of the GreenScreen assessment tool, nor does it exclude substances with toxic properties from new products. It does not follow the principles of green chemistry or market safer alternatives on its website either.
The Japanese company shares chemical safety information on its website but does not have a phase-out strategy for hazardous substances. Toray Industries is a member of Responsible Care and follows voluntary standards such as a Code of Conduct and a Supplier Code of Conduct.
In 2017, it was revealed that a Toray subsidiary (Toray Hybrid Cord, Inc) had been falsifying the data from its product tests for eight years. It manipulated 149 numbers against 13 client companies. The company disclosed the information, but only after it was leaked online. According to its CSR report for 2018, there was one incident of chemical liquids leaking out of its factory into the environment, polluting the water.
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