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2018 Activities and
Environmental Data

At the Kumon Group, we promote the assessment and reduction of the environmental burden resulting from our business activities, and promote forest preservation in accordance with our Environmental Policy.

In FY2018, we continued efforts to reduce electricity usage and paper usage, and to increase paper recycling at each Group company. In addition, within Japan we are promoting work reforms for all staff. These reforms promote a variety of ways of working in order to create value and increase productivity. As part of these reforms we have been promoting less usage of paper and more usage of digital formats as well as efficiency enhancement measures. As a result, paper usage has been cut by a large amount.

The year-over-year environmental data of the entire Kumon Group for the FY2017 shows that our electricity usage was 94.0%, paper usage was 81.2%, and paper recycling was 84.2%.

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The reporting period is the FY2018 (April 1, 2018 – March 31, 2019), but the environmental data and activities also include data from outside this period.
*
Regarding electricity usage, the following locations are not included in this report:
KNA USA:
North America Headquarters New York Tri-State Office, Manhattan Office, Washington, D. C., Office, Detroit Branch Office, Seattle Office, Boston Office, Atlanta Office
Canada:
Montreal Office, Vancouver Office, Calgary Office
KAO Indonesia:
Bandung Office, Surabaya Office
Australia:
Melbourne Office
KCN:
China Headquarters
KEA UK:
Birmingham
Ireland:
Dublin Branch

Electricity usage

The Kumon Group promotes the reduction of electricity usage to contribute to reduction of greenhouse gases and to prevent global warming.

We are implementing a variety of energy-saving activities on a daily basis such as carefully adjusting air conditioning and heating temperatures, turning off lights in areas not being used, and energy-saving settings for computers.

In FY2018 proactive measures were taken such as the implementation of LED lighting and the updating of heating and cooling equipment. Furthermore, as a result of an office reorganization in Japan, there were reductions in KNA of 10.5%, KEA of 4.6%, and of 6.4% in Japan in comparison with FY2017.

For the entire Kumon Group, we reduced usage by 6.0%.

We will continue to promote our resource-saving activities.

graph
  FY 2014 FY 2015 FY 2016 FY 2017 FY 2018
Electricity usage
(MWh)
13,110 13,905 14,110 13,200 12,413
Y/Y(%) - 106.1 101.5 93.5 94.0

CO2 emissions

The majority of greenhouse gases emitted by the Kumon Group are generated by electricity usage. Therefore, we work on the reduction of our CO2 emissions by promoting the reduction of our electricity usage.

Compared with the emissions in FY2017, the entire Kumon Group reduced them by 5.3%, and reduced intensity (CO2 emission/sales) by 5.1%.

*The CO2 conversion coefficients used are the latest for each country as listed in “CO2 Emissions from Fuel Combustion” by the International Energy Agency (IEA). As the figures were disclosed only after our count, we retroactively corrected the data to the coefficients of the concerned fiscal year.

  FY 2014 FY 2015 FY 2016 FY 2017 FY 2018
CO2 emissions
(t-CO2)
6,858 7,105 7,100 6.688 6,335
Y/Y(%) - 103.6 99.9 94.2 94.7

Paper usage

As the Kumon Group uses a large amount of paper for worksheets, etc., we promote the reduction of paper usage to preserve forest resources.

We have been promoting such measures as document digitalization, paperless meetings, printing on both sides of paper, and reduced format printing. In addition, we have switched from paper to digital for some application and request for approval documents.

The following reduction were made in paper usage in FY2018 vs. FY2017: KEA = 39.7% reduction, KEA = 18.6% reduction, Japan = 21.0% reduction.

As for the whole Kumon Group, use was reduced by 18.8% and intensity (paper use/sales) by 18.6%.

  • *We calculate paper purchase volume as paper usage volume
graph
  FY 2014 FY 2015 FY 2016 FY 2017 FY 2018
Paper usage
(millions of sheets)
71.2 70.9 69.2 63.9 51.9
Y/Y(%) - 99.5 97.7 92.3 81.2

Paper recycling

Each Kumon Group company promotes recycling, by placing paper recycling boxes to collect used copy papers as much as possible.
Headquarters in Japan collects recyclable material on a regular basis and puts it out for recycling.

In FY2018 paper usage was cut by a large amount. The Kumon Group as a whole was able to reduce paper usage by 15.8% compared to FY2017.

  FY 2014 FY 2015 FY 2016 FY 2017 FY 2018
Paper recycling(t) 769.6 720.4 968.9 1223.3 1030.6
Y/Y(%) - 93.6 134.5 126.3 84.2
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