Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC), today, opened the new Biotope*1 Tsutsumi in its Tsutsumi Plant (Toyota City, Aichi). At approximately 2,800 m2, the new facility is over ten times larger than anything built previously and the largest among TMC plants in Japan. It will benefit from the assistance of the city of Toyota and various experts and serve to intensify local environment conservation activities. Furthermore, as part of our ongoing efforts to create plants that coexist with nature and the local community, the new Biotope Tsutsumi will also act as an environmental education facility that will help both employees of the plant and a greater number of local residents to feel closer to the natural environment.
Since 2007, TMC has engaged in sustainable plant activities*2 at its plants worldwide as part of its efforts to build plants in harmony with nature. Moreover, both to assess the fruits of its longstanding environment conservation activities and to enable society to benefit from the resulting knowledge and experience, TMC launched the Toyota Environmental Challenge 2050*3 in 2015. Since then, it has been carrying out activities related to the six challenges defined in that program throughout the world.
Selected as model plant for these activities upon their launch in 2007, the Tsutsumi plant has introduced solar power generation and other forms of renewable energy, established an on-site biotope, and held tree-planting and other plant afforestation events. Since 2015, expanded efforts to focus on achieving the Challenge 6, the Challenge of Establishing a Future Society in Harmony with Nature*4, have led to the opening of Biotope Tsutsumi.
Designed to help preserve the original local ecosystem and based on the concept of a traditional Japanese satoyamaforest*5 consisting primarily of the konara oak found throughout the region, the Biotope Tsutsumi environment integrates waterside, grassland, forest, and other natural areas. Populated with local fauna and flora, the biotope also preserves endangered plants and fish living in Toyota*6, and will strive to increase their population. Representative animal and plant species have been selected as indicator species*7 to provide quantitative measurements that will allow objective evaluations and regular revisions of this project, which will be pursued as a collaborative and unified effort between local residents and employees under the guidance of the city of Toyota and various experts.
This initiative presents one model that will be used by TMC to assess suitable environment conservation projects to carry out at its other production plants worldwide as part of its efforts to contribute to the realization of a sustainable society.
| *1 | Derived from bios, (life) and topos, (place), this term designates an environment providing a long-term living place for plants and animals. Originating in Germany in the 1970s, this concept involves people taking actions to allow nature to regenerate itself through its own means. |
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| *2 | The sustainable plant activities are currently being pursued in expanded form in the context of the Toyota Environmental Challenge 2050 program. Toyota corporate website, “Tree-planting Event Kicks Off Sustainable Plant Activities” https://newsroom.toyota.co.jp/en/detail/300096 |
| *3 | Toyota corporate website, “Toyota Environmental Challenge 2050” https://www.toyota-global.com/sustainability/environment/challenge2050/ |
| *4 | Environmental Report 2018 https://www.toyota.co.jp/jpn/sustainability/report/er/ (in Japanese) |
| *5 | Generic term for a forest located near a community that consists primarily of konara, abemaki or other varieties of oak and is closely entwined in local day-to-day life as a source of necessities such as wood for fuel or fallen leaves that can be used as fertilizer. |
| *6 | Aquatic plant: pondweed, fish: minami killifish, ushimotsugo (a species of cyprinid fish). |
| *7 | A plant or animal species that provides an indicator for the quantitative evaluation of an ecosystem. |
