Environmental action of Oji Paper Company

Upon the birth of Oji Paper Co. after the merger of New Oji Paper with Honsyu Seishi in 1996, we want to inspect the progress states of our Action Plan when we greet now the 21st century after 4 years have passed since we established The Oji Paper Environmental Charter newly and Environmental Action Plan 21 as concrete action. The Action Plan contains 5 items. They are: Overseas Tree-Planting project, Used Paper Utilization Countermeasures, Energy Countermeasures, Environmental Management System and Waste Management, all with target dates of 2010 fiscal year. Each Action Plan is progressing fairly smoothly. They are as follows. Tree-planting area in foreign countries has reached 90,000 ha and used-paper utilization of Oji group has increased favorably while a 25% target for total used-paper consumption in Japan has already been achieved. Purchases of energy in unit terms has already improved to a 5.1% reduction which is more than half of the target figure of 10% compared to 1990. Regarding the Environmental Management System ISO14001, 13 mills out of 17 mills received Environmental Certification with the remaining 4 mills receiving certification by autumn of this year. Effective waste utilization has progressed resulting in a sharp reduction in the final treatment, i.e. reclaimed quantity. The Company intends to proceed with environmental protection activities targeting both Forest Recycling and Paper Recycling from now on and want to attain the goal even earlier than the 2010.