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Tosoh
About the company
Grade Summary
Tosoh Corporation produces 4 hazardous chemicals. This may not seem too bad, compared to many of the other companies in the ranking. But the fact that there is no available data for as much as 93 percent of the company’s production that takes place outside of the EU and US leaves the company with 1 single point in the Product Portfolio category. 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 Tosoh Corporation being involved in any major controversies, rendering the company all 6 points in the last category. These points really save it from being among the very worst performers. In the remaining categories, Tosoh Corporation’s performance is weak across the board.
Opportunities for improvement
- We can only rank 7 percent of Tosoh Corporation’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.
- Tosoh Corporation states that it is “placing top priority on the protection of the environment, on operating safety, and on the health of its employees and the public at large”. Still, a chemical management strategy is nowhere to be found. We would like to see a systematic tool to assess intrinsic hazards, timed phase-out plans, as well as hazardous chemicals being designed out from new products.
- With 0 points for its circularity efforts, Tosoh Corporation 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 Tosoh Corporation to develop its own circular products and concepts.
Category breakdown
Tosoh produces/uses 4 highly hazardous substances – 4 SIN List chemicals (no PICs and no HHPs) – 1 of which is included on the EU’s REACH Candidate List. None of these highly hazardous substances are either banned or severely restricted (no Authorisation List substances, and no POPs). The company produces no persistent chemicals.
Please note that there is no available data for the 93 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.
Tosoh Corporation has a method in place to screen and assess the sustainability of its products, but does not include the intrinsic hazards of ingredients in the screening process. It does not exclude substances with toxic properties from its new products. Tosoh Corporation does not actively market safer alternatives on its own website, neither on ChemSec Marketplace. The company has no true circular product, process or innovation. Tosoh Corporation 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. Tosoh Corporation 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. Tosoh Corporation did not respond to ChemSec’s attempts to communicate around its ChemScore ranking and it does not share any information about what kind of chemicals it produces in regions with low regulatory demands for transparency (e.g. Asia). Tosoh Corporation does not have a circular economy program in place, and it is lacking objective and measurable circular economy targets.
Between 2011 and 2020, Tosoh Corporation paid close to 12,000 USD in fines for one environmental violation according to the violation tracker project of Good Jobs First.
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