Toyota Corporation’s Sustainability Efforts

Introduction

The significance of corporate sustainability and responsibility has become common among businesses globally in recent years. Corporate executives are desperately trying to gain a comprehensive understanding of how organizations, ethics, society, corporate sustainability, and responsibility interact with each other. Sustainability refers to the capability to meet present needs without hampering future generations’ ability to fulfill their wants in terms of social, environmental, and economic challenges. Major multinational corporations, such as Samsung, Toyota, Microsoft, General Motors, and Apple, have implemented corporate strategies that seek to achieve efficient sustainability practices. Such companies utilize strategies that protect employees and the environment while making profits (Rimanoczy, 2020). To understand social responsibility and sustainability, it is critical to use a multinational corporation like Toyota to analyze its sustainability goals, initiatives, and strategy and how they relate to the sustainable development goals.

Toyota’s Sustainability Strategy, Goals, and Initiatives

Toyota Motor Corporation is a Japanese multinational company that deals in the automotive business, financial services, and other ventures. Toyota is working towards contemporary society’s sustainable development through its business operations. The corporation is committed to principles such as community, diversity and inclusiveness, health and safety, financial responsibility, ethics and business conduct, environment, and sustainability (Lashitew, 2021). The company’s recent sustainability reports show that it is committed to ensuring that cars and other products can coexist with humans and the environment through various efforts.

Toyota focuses on six materiality goals that can be categorized into society and environment. The social aspect of sustainability focuses on respect for people and human rights, safety and health, diversity, and inclusion. Firstly, the company advocates for the respect of people and empowers its human capital. Respecting its employees and customers aligns with Toyota’s human rights goals. The company believes that every employee can improve society, themselves, and the corporation. Embracing human rights as a founding principle of labor relations enables Toyota to achieve increasing company growth (Toyota, 2021). Sustainability is meeting current needs without compromising future generations’ ability to thrive. Creating a decent work environment that fosters safety and health, is inclusive and diverse, and is free from harassment and discrimination improves employee job performance (Dewitz, 2019). Furthermore, the corporation respects labor standards by offering flexible workstyle and worktime, competitive wages, and promoting anti-harassment (Lashitew, 2021). As a result, workers and the company are collectively satisfied, which ensures their success and survival.

Secondly, the company aims to make high-quality, reasonably priced, and safe cars. The number of accidents from control mistakes has increased, and Toyota is committed to creating safety technologies that can prevent fatalities. Toyota is also focused on achieving sustainability goals in regards to the environment. For instance, the company is always concerned about environmental issues and wants to contribute towards a successful society by aiming to achieve zero emissions in all stages of its supply chain. Toyota’s strategy is developing and providing products with the highest efficiency in environmental performance (Dewitz, 2019). In addition, the company aims to ensure its production activities are waste-free. To achieve the highest environmental efficiency in its products and processes, Toyota has committed to pursuing every possible environmental technology to allow the harmonious coexistence of the economy and environment (Toyota, 2021). Furthermore, Toyota aims to work and create cooperative relationships with various stakeholders, such as governments, affiliated industries and companies, and local municipalities, to protect the environment (Dewitz, 2019). Ultimately, Toyota is focused on achieving zero carbon emissions, minimizing water usage, and creating a recycling-based society.

Toyota and United Nations Sustainable Development Goals

The United Nations implemented a sustainability project in September 2015 that includes seventeen sustainable development goals (SDGs). Such objectives aim to create a sustainable and better future for all people globally. Toyota does its part in ensuring that the future is better and accommodative to later generations. Firstly, Toyota has tried to address goal 9 of the SDGs, which is building resilient infrastructure, fostering innovation, and promoting sustainable and inclusive industrialization (Meschede, 2020). A strong and functioning infrastructure creates a successful economy and community.

Industries and infrastructure must continually embrace upgrades if they want to meet the evolving challenges in the future. As a result, the United Nations urges companies and countries to promote innovative and sustainable technologies, as well as ensure universal access to financial markets and information. Encouraging innovation and sustainable industrialization will result in prosperous societies and create multiple jobs. Toyota has taken advantage of its knowledge in developing electrified vehicles. The company focuses on the creation of various modes of electric vehicles such as fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs), battery electric vehicles (BEVs), plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), and hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) (Singh et al., 2021). Furthermore, Toyota engages in the development of humanoid robots and the Total Human Model for Safety (THUMS) software that helps create safe mobility societies (Toyota, 2021). Toyota believes that innovative environmental technologies can impact society by reducing carbon emissions.

Secondly, Toyota contributes to goal thirteen of SDGs, which involves climate action. It entails modern society taking urgent action to reduce climate change and its effects. Climate change is an undeniable and real threat to the entire world’s biodiversity. The consequences of climate change are visible and will cause catastrophic environmental effects unless immediate action is taken to combat the issue. The goal of climate action is to build capacity and knowledge on the mitigation of climate change (Meschede, 2020). Toyota is committed to achieving zero carbon emissions for new vehicles. The corporation aims to reduce global carbon emissions from its new vehicles by ninety percent by 2050 through the development of electrified automobiles. Thirdly, Toyota participates in the third SDG, which is good health and well-being (Dewitz, 2019). Toyota ensures that people live healthy lives and promotes well-being among all individuals through safety initiatives such as the preventive safety package to reduce accidents.

Toyota’s Measurement of Sustainability

Toyota uses various forms of standards when preparing its sustainability reports. They include the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standards, the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) framework, and the ISO 26000 guidelines. The GRI standards allow an organization to understand their impacts on society, environment, and economy, increasing transparency and accountability. Toyota combines the GRI standards with the SASB framework to explain the management of material issues and financial information. GRI focuses on measuring material issues such as human rights, whereas SASB focuses on financial reporting (Wong et al., 2021). Toyota uses GRI widely because of its investor alignment and provision of high-quality data. In addition, Toyota uses the ISO 26000 standards to guide its reporting of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) efforts. The ISO 26000 standard measures and offers guidance on labor practices, human rights, environmental responsibility, and organizational governance (Isaksson & Mitra, 2019). Toyota’s ESG reporting and commitment to social responsibility are indicated by the perfect scores in water and climate sustainability efforts.

Reflection on Measurement and Results

The measurement and results of Toyota’s sustainability efforts are interesting research. For example, Toyota has achieved various things to conserve the environment, such as water reuse and recycling, carbon emissions reduction, and waste reduction. Toyota ensures that it develops innovative technologies to reduce environmental consequences caused by its operations. Regarding measurement, the methods Toyota uses to measure sustainability efforts are up-to-date and provide high-quality results (Toyota, 2021). Although the GRI standards and SASB framework effectively guide ESG reporting, it is surprising that the main sustainability metrics can be grouped into several categories (Zengin et al., 2021). They include management behavior, supply chain, energy consumption, water usage, climate, waste or pollution, and employee safety and health.

Energy consumption is the first metric that can be utilized to measure sustainability. If a company develops energy-efficient technologies, its operational costs are reduced, leading to increased financial performance. The source of a company’s energy can be used as a measure of sustainability because the energy type used determines the number of carbon emissions, which may or may not lead to climate change. Reduction in waste and water usage shows a company is working on becoming sustainable (Zengin et al., 2021). Ultimately, the seven metrics show that sustainability can be measured using simpler factors.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is crucial to evaluate sustainability strategies and goals using Toyota as an example to comprehend sustainability and social responsibility better. Toyota follows a similar trend to other multinational corporations to promote green operations. It has pledged to reduce carbon emissions, water usage and respect human rights. Its sustainability efforts are reported following the GRI and SASB reporting standards. In modern society, companies are required to have a sustainability mindset because the public has become interested in the environmental effects of different businesses. From the analysis of Toyota, sustainability mindset refers to a set of expectations, attitudes, and beliefs regarding the world that make humans choose their default actions in the workplace, especially decisions that utilize resources efficiently. Furthermore, a sustainability mindset refers to the active mindfulness about how a person’s decisions may affect others and the environment.

References

Dewitz, P. (2019). Industry initiatives towards environmental sustainability in the automobile value chains. In M. Schmidt et al. (Eds.), Sustainable global value chains (pp. 565-583). Springer.

Isaksson L.E., & Mitra N. (2019). ISO 26000: The Toyota Motor Corporation’s CSR approaches in India. In S. Idowu et al. (Eds.), ISO 26000 – A standardized view on corporate social responsibility: Practices, cases, and controversies (pp. 137-157). Springer.

Lashitew, A. A. (2021). Corporate uptake of the Sustainable Development Goals: Mere greenwashing or an advent of institutional change? Journal of International Business Policy, 4(1), 184-200. Web.

Meschede, C. (2020). The sustainable development goals in scientific literature: A bibliometric overview at the meta-level. Sustainability, 12(11), 4461. Web.

Rimanoczy, I. (2020). The sustainability mindset principles: A guide to develop a mindset for a better world. Routledge.

Singh, K. V., Bansal, H. O., & Singh, D. (2021). Development of an adaptive neuro‐fuzzy inference system–based equivalent consumption minimization strategy to improve fuel economy in hybrid electric vehicles. IET Electrical Systems in Transportation, 11(3), 171-185. Web.

Toyota. (2021). Sustainability data book.Web.

Wong, C. W., Wong, C. Y., Boon-itt, S., & Tang, A. K. (2021). Strategies for building environmental transparency and accountability. Sustainability, 13(16), 9116. Web.

Zengin, Y., Naktiyok, S., Kaygın, E., Kavak, O., & Topçuoğlu, E. (2021). An investigation upon industry 4.0 and society 5.0 within the context of sustainable development goals. Sustainability, 13(5), 2682. Web.