About Us - Environment

Environment

Toyota regards the protection of the global environment as one of its top priority concerns. At every stage of a vehicle's life, Toyota strives to protect the environment through reducing energy use and minimising waste.

Toyota's commitment to the environment extends to all areas of its operations. In 1992, its Global Policy established action guidelines known as Toyota's 'Earth Charter'.

Toyota Manufacturing UK's environmental policy reflects Toyota's global earth charter. It was Toyota's first overseas plant and the UK's first car manufacturer to achieve ISO14001 certification. It was also the first overseas Toyota plant to use waterborne paints and is the first UK car plant to achieve zero waste to landfill.

All Toyota's efforts are underpinned by our 5Rs philosophy that seeks to eliminate the amount of waste involved in processes. The 5Rs are Refinement, Reduction, Re-use, Recyclability and the Retrieval of energy. The 5Rs focus on building in environmental considerations, minimising waste generation at source, re-using packaging, recycling material in the same or different processes and optimising energy resources throughout the company.

find our more about our responsible approach to the environment

The production of vehicles and engines in factories has the potential to impact on the environment. To ensure that car manufacturing can make more with less, Toyota developed its world-famous Toyota Production System (TPS) several decades ago. Over the years, TPS has also evolved to include environmental targets.

Toyota's Production System...

eliminates waste
reduces energy usage
minimises use of raw materials
delivers standardised quality

by...

applying best practice in all processes ("Yokoten")
continuous improvement ("Kaizen")
going to the source to find the facts ("Genchi Genbutsu")
just-in-time production by 'pulling' products through the production line active involvement from all team members

Performance and targets

Toyota has established a set of key performance indicators (KPI’s) for each of the most significant aspects of production. The key performance indicators are: energy usage, water usage, waste and VOCs (volatile organic compounds) released from the painting process.

At Toyota Manufacturing UK, since start of our operations in 1992, we have continued to seek ways to reduce the environmental impact of our operations. The following graphs indicate our Burnaston plant performance in each of these environmental KPI’s. Each year we continue to set targets to improve our results. Our performance is reported on a consolidated basis, along with all other European Manufacturing Companies and published in Toyota Motor Europe’s annual Sustainability report.

TMUK - Tackling environmental impact

Our Commitment to reducing CO2

Toyota Manufacturing UK has set a target to reduce plant produced C02 emissions. Since 2003 we have seen significant reduction in the amount of CO2 produced per vehicle and engine from our plants in Burnaston, Derbyshire (vehicle manufacturing ) and Deeside, North Wales (engine manufacturing).