ECO Technology Initiatives
At Panasonic we are making the Environment a key driver of our business. This means placing environment at the heart of our product design process.
Panasonic's concept of “Green Products” was introduced with the aim of enhancing the quality of people's lives by improving our product functions, whilst reducing their environmental impact over their life cycles at the same time.
When it comes to Design, all our designers must employ a technique called 'Panasonic's Product Assessment' based on the concept known as Life Cycle Assessment. Its purpose is to identify and improve every product’s environmental performance. We set targets based on this technique, and our approach seeks to cover the three main environmental burdens associated with consumer electronics: (i) conserving energy & preventing global warming, (ii) seeking effective utilisation of resources (including resource recyclability) and (iii) minimising pollution risks involved in the use of chemicals.
The world’s first lead-free plasma
In November 2006, Panasonic became the first manufacturer worldwide to eliminate the use of lead across all types of plasma display panels. Creating lead-free
plasma display panels presented such a tough technical challenge in terms of the development of alternative materials that these components had been given an
exemption from the EU RoHS Directive (Restriction of the use of certain Hazardous Substances in electrical and electronic equipment), which went into use in July
2006. But the attitude at Panasonic was that making these widely used products
lead-free was something that had to be done for the good of customers worldwide.
After considerable research, the Company finally came up with an alternative material known as bismuth glass. Further development work produced an original additive
to counter instability in the bismuth glass and a revised material composition for the non-glass components. The result was a highly stable glass panel with
characteristics close to that of leaded glass, but based on the alternative metal bismuth. The world’s first lead-free plasma display panel was born.