Tokyo, January 23, 1998 - Honda Motor Co., Ltd. has announced that on January 22 its Saitama Factory (General Manager: Hiroshi Sekine) received certification from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) for its compliance with ISO 14001 environmental management systems standards. In Japan, the Saitama Factory is the fifth Honda facility to receive ISO 14001 certification, following the power products plant at the Hamamatsu Factory, the Tochigi Factory, Honda Engineering Co., Ltd., and the Kumamoto Factory. One overseas Honda facility has also been granted ISO 14001 certification so far.
The Saitama Factory consists of two separate plants - the Sayama Plant, where car bodies for models such as the Legend, the Accord and the Odyssey are assembled, and the Wako Plant, which produces engines. Both plants received their ISO 14001 approvals at the same time, following assessments conducted on each factory by the Japan Automobile Research Center.
Honda has made environmental protection and conservation one of its prime corporate aims, and has undertaken many programs to achieve this objective. A variety of specialist internal committees and groups have been established over the years to coordinate the company's environmental efforts:
| August 1970: | Environmental Pollution Division |
| November 1975: | Energy Committee |
| April 1979: | Environmental Action Committee |
| November 1989: | CFC Action Committee |
| June 1990: | Environmental Safety Group |
| November 1990: |
Recycling Committee |
In June 1992 Honda issued its new corporate policy on the environment, committing itself to make all corporate activities - from research and development right through to production, sales, servicing and disposal - contribute actively to the protection and conservation of the environment.
The company regularly undertakes intra-company environmental audits and publishes the results of these investigations to demonstrate what the company is doing to prevent pollution. From 1994, Honda has tried to enhance the effectiveness of these intra-company audits by conducting audits based on internationally approved standards.
So that the company can build on achievements to date and improve its environmental record on a global scale, all of Honda's manufacturing facilities around the world have been in the process of working to achieve ISO 14001 certification, with goals of March 1998 for domestic plants and March 1999 for overseas plants.