This article is written by Newport's Employee Development Team. We hold seminars and educate Newport staff to help improve the working environment.
Recently we joined an online seminar hosted by Nobuyuki Mizutani, a representative of MORE TREES, an organization that Newport supports as part of our environmental activities.
The theme was "Climate Change & Forests." There was lot to learn including three impressive facts.
1. Forest area the size of 15 tennis courts is destroyed every second. This is caused primarily by deforestation and forest fires. This is negative news, but there was also some positive information.
2. The forest rate in Japan is ranked highly among advanced countries. Even though forests are declining around the world, forest area in Japan is expanding. Increasing forest area plays a big role in absorbing CO2.
3. Seaweed is spotlighted as "blue carbon." Since seaweed also absorbs CO2 as forests do, they are called forests in the sea.
This seminar gave us a great opportunity to rethink what each of us can do to prevent or limit global warming. As a company we need to help get out of the bad spiral of: losing forests -> reducing the amount of CO2 that can be absorbed -> increasing global warming.
Newport staff in Nakatosa-cho, Kochi prefecture (April 2017)
[Newport & MORE TREES]
Newport buys the CO2 CREDIT※ from MORE TREES in order to offset the CO2 generated through our product importing, domestic transport, warehouse storage and staff transportation.
※CREDIT= System authorized by the Japanese government whereby the government certifies the amount of CO2 being reduced through the introduction of energy efficiency or better administration of the forests.
If you are interested in environmental issues, check out MORE TREES’ blog ➡ https://www.more-trees.org/news/20130904/
We have started to pay more attention to even subtle things in our daily lives such as reducing trash, recycling and not wasting electricity. Though it may seem that an individual’s effort doesn’t mean much, if we all do it, our environment will improve. Let’s start from today!