Improving Resource Efficiency
We are promoting the recycling of waste and by-products into alternative raw materials and fuels for cement. This promotes the formation of circular economies from the perspective of suppressing the depletion of natural resources, and also contributes to extending the life of final disposal sites.
We will continue to create new added value and grow while flexibly responding to cement demand trends and social demands, etc., and we will strive to achieve circular economies and carbon neutrality.
We have set the establishment of circular economies as part of our environmental management policy, and we position it as an important management challenge as one of our materiality challenges. We aim to reduce our environmental impact and achieve economic growth by utilizing the characteristics of the cement industry, aiming for further sophistication of recycled resource utilization technologies, and launching and developing new businesses that contribute to deepening them. The Taiheiyo Cement Group not only recycles difficult-to-treat waste using the cement manufacturing process, but also recovers various useful resources such as through phosphorus recovery technology (Rintoru), useful metal/precious metal recovery technology in the cement manufacturing process, and lithium-ion battery treatment technology, enabling reuse through collaboration with other industries.
We will promote this under the basic policy of promoting sustainability management, while developing and sharing it in each business and research and development department.
The roadmap for realizing a circular economy toward 2030 will promote the following initiatives, taking into account current social conditions such as domestic cement demand trends and the promotion of carbon neutral initiatives.
- Securing the superiority of existing businesses
- Further improvement of the thermal energy substitution rate by securing waste streams for treatment in cement production
- Securing coal ash sources for use as supplementary cementitious materials in blended cement
Furthermore, we will promote the following initiatives to contribute to the deepening of circular economies,:
- Recycling lithium-ion batteries, which are one of the difficult-to-treat materials
- Participation in the demonstration project for phosphorus recovery from sewage for use as fertilizer, independent of the cement business, and a waste solar panel treatment business
- Establishment of technology for recovering precious metals and the removal of heavy metals from municipal waste incineration residues
Resource Recycling with Local Communities
In addition to industrial waste, we also use general waste generated by local governments, municipal waste incineration residues, water purification sludge and sewage sludge as raw materials and fuel to manufacture cement.
The national waste generation volume in FY2023 was 40.34 million tonnes, of which 3.37 million tonnes, including non-utilized incineration residues that could not be incinerated, were landfilled at final disposal sites.
The Group's systems for recycling municipal waste that meet the needs of society include the Incineration Residues Recycling System, the AK System, and the Ecocement System. By making use of these three technologies related to municipal waste processing, we strive to make effective use of such resources and resolve environmental issues.
Resource Recycling with Industries
We accept coal ash produced at coal-fired thermal power plants and use it as a substitute for clay as a cement raw material. In addition, we are developing ash centers to increase the amount of ash we can effectively use. We supply limestone powder to power plants as a desulfurization agent for sulfur oxides generated by coal combustion, and we also take back and effectively utilize the by-product gypsum generated from the reaction as a cement raw material.
In steel production the refining process removes impurities from the iron ore as it's transformed into steel. We supply the limestone and quicklime used in the refining process. We also take in by-products such as blast furnace slag generated after refining, and use them as cement raw materials and as admixtures.
| KPIs, Targets | FY2022 | FY2023 | FY2024 | FY2025 |
| Promote the use of alternative raw materials and fuels Maintain waste usage intensity of 400 kg/tonne-cement or more |
405.2kg kg/t-cement | 409.6kg kg/t-cement | 421.9kg kg/t-cement | 412.6kg kg/t-cement |
| Waste emissions Maintain volume of waste to landfill at or below 40 tonnes |
1.3 tonnes | 1.9 tonnes | 2.0 tonnes | 13.9 tonnes |
Demonstration facility of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism's "Breakthrough by Dynamic Approach in Sewage High Technology Project (B-DASH Project)"
Initiatives at Service Stations
Service stations (SS) reduce the waste handled by waste disposal contractors by returning any residual cement that remains in silos after switching cement products. Returned cement is recycled as raw material. The recycling rate in FY2025 has increased by 1.4% compared to the previous fiscal year.
We evaluate the socioeconomic benefits from environmental impact reduction due to increased recycling of waste in monetary terms.
Basic approach
We use the external economic benefit (EEB) evaluation method through our Recycled-Waste-to-Cement System to express, in monetary terms, our evaluation of socioeconomic benefits from environmental impact reduction due to increased recycling of waste accepted from outside the company. We calculate that we created a social benefit of 93.4 billion yen in FY2025. In FY2025, the amount of waste reduced increased from the previous fiscal year, and the economic effect increased by about 5% year-on-year.
| Impact | Inventory | Reduction (t) |
Inventory Market Price (Yen/t) |
External economic benefit (EEB) (Billions of yen) |
| Climate change mitigation | CO2 | 1,828,869 | 3,000 | 55 |
| Depletion of energy resources | Crude oil | 99,805 | 18,400 | 18 |
| Depletion of mineral resources | Natural resources | 4,545,574 | 1,000 | 45 |
| Shortage of landfills | Waste | 5,436,755 | 15,000 | 816 |
| Total | 934 |
Taiheiyo Cement’s External Economic Benefits Evaluation
- This is a calculation, using a unique method, of the environmental impact that would be felt by society as a whole if our company did not recycle waste from other industries.
- We use information, including data collected for the GCCA Cement CO2 Protocol, to calculate the reduction in consumption of fossil energy and natural resources associated with the use of waste and by-products.
- Economic benefits are calculated by multiplying reductions in consumption (effects of environmental conservation) by set market prices. The market values of the inventory items are set at FY2001 levels, and are estimated on the basis of the following considerations. CO2: Carbon tax of 3,000 yen/tonne, Crude oil: Import price, Natural raw materials: Purchase price (assumed), Waste: Treatment cost at a managed disposal site (Tokyo metropolitan area)
- A portion of the External Economic Benefits is accounted for in our profit and loss statement.
