Approach to Recycling and Reusing Resources and Reducing Usage

The "3R" concept (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) is becoming ever more important in all phases of product lifecycles from development and production to use and final disposal, in order to create a recycling-oriented society. The Yamaha Motor group set "Product and factory: 100% recycling" and "Long life" as goals for 2010 and has undertaken various initiatives to meet them.
In order to reduce product weight and thus increase fuel efficiency, we are implementing various approaches such as reducing component size, increasing the use of magnesium, aluminum and plastic resins, reducing the number of parts, and reducing the thickness of parts by pursuing optimal shapes. Furthermore, we plan to increase the use of a system that collects parts recyclability data in order to improve the applicability of the 3R concept to our products.

Measures to Reduce Waste and Conserve Resources at the Manufacturing Stage

In 2010, Yamaha Motor generated 23,465 tons of industrial waste. Waste is appropriately processed through material recycling and thermal recycling at our Amenity Clean Energy Plant (ACEP), an internal waste incineration facility. As a result, Yamaha Motor has been able to continuously achieve 0 tons of direct/indirect landfill waste (a recycling rate of 100%). In addition, we set a target of reducing waste volume per unit of sales by an average of 1% annually compared to 2007 (3% by 2010) and achieved a 2% reduction.

3R Designs and Product Recycling

The Yamaha Motor group is actively adopting designs based on the 3R concept (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) for various products. In Japan, we are continuing operation of the Motorcycle Recycling System in cooperation with other industry firms to facilitate appropriate processing of end-of-life motorcycles by dealers.

Example of 3R design (model released in 2010)

3R Initiatives in Spare Parts Distribution

The Yamaha Motor group is taking various steps to reuse and recycle resources and reduce resource usage during parts distribution. For example, we are implementing snugly interfitted packing inside cargo containers (thus increasing loading density and reducing number of containers necessary), increasing the number of regions that use returnable shipping pallets with the start of operations at the Latin America distribution center (thus increasing reuse rate), and manufacturing returnable pallets from the plastic resins discharged from our sites (thus recycling the waste materials within sites). In 2010, 71% of Yamaha Motor's export containers were returnable, up from 70% in 2009.

Conservation of Water Resources

The Yamaha Motor group addresses the conservation of water resources as a group-wide issue and is taking global measures to improve the operational aspects involved in the investigation of actual water consumption.