Environmental Education and Training

  The Yamaha Group offers a variety of training and education opportunities to Company employees in an effort to raise their knowledge and skills with respect to the environment. We categorize environmental training into “General,” “Specialty,” “Emergency Response Training,” and other courses that meet the needs of the local Yamaha entity and their work-related duties. Group-sponsored training and brush-up seminars for internal environmental auditors are another way to improve Group-wide environmental preservation activities. We also support training to help increase environmental awareness among our employees.

  June is the Yamaha Group “Environment Month,” during which we sponsor different environmental seminars. These seminars are for all Yamaha employees, including the president, directors, and staff, as well as for our business partners. These educational opportunities are designed to help spread knowledge and understanding about the environment.

Past Environmental Seminars

  The Group has established curriculum for employees engaged in operations that require specialized knowledge, including personnel involved in waste management and water treatment operations.

  We also conduct training at each business location for potential emergency situations, based on the ISO14001 operating manual. This emergency response training teaches employees how to deal with accidents such as the leakage of environmental contaminants.

  Training the staff who actually perform our self-regulated activities with respect to environmental training is essential for improving the operations of our environmental management system. The Yamaha Group holds annual seminars conducted by external organizations to train internal environmental auditors.

  Fifteen audit staff participated in the May 2010 seminar held at Yamaha headquarters. Since our first such training in March 1998, we have held 37 seminars, with more than 1,000 cumulative participants who are registered as internal environmental auditors.

  With the migration to an ISO integrated management system during fiscal 2010, we held an Internal Environmental Auditor Brush-Up Seminar to improve the skill set of staff members responsible for internal audits. We held this seminar in May 2010 at the Yamaha headquarters, where 23 individuals were able to build stronger audit skills related to environmental activities that are linked directly to our business.

  The Yamaha Group provides support and training to improve the environmental awareness of our employees and to promote eco activities that employees can perform as part of their daily routines.

(1)Household Eco-Account Book: Smart Life Guide

  Since fiscal 2003, the Yamaha Group has worked in partnership with the Yamaha labor union to conduct the Eco-Account Book “Smart Life Guide” program. This program encourages employees to record household usage of electricity, natural gas, and gasoline. Recording these figures helps employees be aware their daily energy consumption and CO₂ emissions, promoting ways to prevent global warming on a personal level.

  The Eco-Account book is a publication unique to Yamaha. The book features “Ecoron,” an original Yamaha cartoon character, which helps children become interested and involved in the program. Yamaha also distributes its own coloring page in which children can write their own ways to help the environment. As a result of Yamaha's emphasis on this program, more than 2,000 households participate each year, with a cumulative 17,000 households having participated in the eight years since the start of the program.

  In fiscal 2011, Yamaha introduced a new Smart Life in My Home Commitment, which each family can make according to their individual circumstances. Yamaha hopes that this new addition to the program will help families make more practical changes in their energy consumption habits by keeping records.

(2)Promoting Green Eco Curtains in Employee Homes

  Beginning in fiscal 2009, the Yamaha Group has encouraged employees to create Green Eco-Curtain in their homes, in parallel with Green Eco Curtain activities at Yamaha business locations.

  In addition to providing how-to instructions, Yamaha distributed seeds for morning glories, Goya, and other hanging plants to those interested.

  Yamaha will be featuring more information in the Company newsletter to encourage employees to provide updates of their progress.