Sony Corporation (Sony), Mitsubishi Corporation, ADEKA CORPORATION, CHIMEI Corporation, ENEOS Corporation, Formosa Chemicals & Fibre Corporation, Hanwha Impact Corporation, Idemitsu Kosan Co., Ltd., Mitsui Chemicals, Inc., Neste Corporation, Qingdao Haier New Material Development Co., Ltd., SK Geo Centric Co., Ltd., Toray Industries, Inc., and Toray Advanced Materials Korea Inc. have jointly established a global supply chain consisting of 14 companies across five countries and regions for the production of renewable plastics that can be used in Sony's high-performance audio-visual products, according to a press release. The various plastic materials manufactured through this supply chain are slated for use in Sony's products that will be launched worldwide. Renewable plastics refer to those made from renewable biomass resources instead of fossil resources.

High-performance products such as audio-visual equipment involve a wide variety of plastics, resulting in a complex supply chain that makes it difficult to visualize and manage the entire flow from raw materials. Additionally, plastic components that require high performance in terms of flame resistance and optical properties cannot be fully replaced with plastics produced through material recycling, hindering the further reduction of virgin fossil-based plastics in such products.

To address these challenges, the 14 companies collaborated to visualize the existing supply chain for Sony's products, and created a new supply chain that enables the production of multiple types of renewable plastics from biomass resources with a mass balance approach4. This allows Sony to proactively source raw materials for its products with the quality and properties equivalent to virgin fossil-based plastics. Defining the supply chain helps the companies track and document GHG (Greenhouse Gas) emissions data over the supply chain in a verifiable way, allowing participating companies to leverage the data to advance efforts to reduce their carbon footprint going forward.

This initiative involving wide-ranging partners is part of the 'Creating NEW from reNEWable materials' project, jointly launched by Sony, which aims to achieve zero usage of virgin fossil-based plastics through the introduction of renewable plastics, and Mitsubishi Corporation.