Sumisho Interior International Inc. (SII), a company dealing in imports, exports and sales of interior goods and interior planning, as well as design and construction, received the Outstanding Performance Award for small and medium-sized companies at the 11th Green Purchasing Awards, organized by the Green Purchasing Network (GPN) (*1).

It is called Green purchasing to make effort by a company in trying to reduce its environmental impact, through the preferential purchase of eco-friendly products and services. The award was given to SII for its unique and advanced environmental efforts in the development of a carbon neutral carpet tile, which is made from recycled materials to reduce CO2 emission in the production and offsets a whole balance of the CO2 emission after the reduction by providing CO2 emission rights purchased from Sumitomo Corporation which has arranged Certified Emission Reductions(CER) authorized by United Nations.

SII and Suminoe Textile Co., Ltd. cooperated in merging their respective technologies toward the joint development of the eco-friendly carpet tile, SUMI GREEN. They were the first in the industry to use recyclable materials on both sides of the carpet tile. The bottom is made of polyvinyl chloride,recycled from used carpet tiles, and the top is made of yarn containing material recycled from PET bottles. SII implemented the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for the calculation of CO2 generated over the entire process--manufacturing, transportation,usage, and disposal--and found that SUMI GREEN generates 19% less CO２ than ordinary carpets do.

SII commenced sales of carbon neutral (*2) SUMI GREEN　in January 2009. On the sales up to now,   the CO2 emission rights equivalent to 151 tons have been voluntarily transferred to the offset account of the Japanese government following United Nations' CER procedure.

Information on Eco-Products 2009

Date: From Thursday, December 10 through Saturday, December 12, 2009
Venue: Tokyo Big Sight
SII is exhibiting SUMI GREEN SG-300/400 at "Eco-Products 2009" in cooperation with booths run by the following organizations (number indicates booth number)
1-013 GPN
1-037 Carbon Offset Network
1-038 Office of the Carbon Offset Forum, Overseas Environmental Cooperation Center, Japan

 

(*1)Green Purchasing Network: Founded in 1996 for the promotion of green purchasing, and has a membership of more than 2,900 organizations including companies, government agencies and consumers.
(*2) carbon neutral: a status in which CO2 emission and absorption levels remain the same and no CO2 is generated during a series of activities.