Panasonic's Chip Board Wins Eco Award

Tokyo, Japan, Jan. 21, 2009--The E Floor, a product developed by Panasonic Electric Works, was recently given the Chairperson’s Award at the Eco-Products 2008 expo held in Tokyo in December, reports Green Building Elements.

The E Floor is a new type of flooring touted by its maker as “special hard chip board” made of 100 percent recycled wood. The raw materials consist of pulverized construction scrap wood and mill ends leftover from plywood manufacturing.

Using E Floor can be equivalent to saving forest areas that are 135 times the size of the Tokyo Dome each year, according to Panasonic, which started selling the E Floor product line over a year ago.

The Panasonic brand is not typically linked with the home building industry, but more companies will be bringing a wide range of their green technologies into their products and services across group companies, explained Tetsuya Yokoyama of Green Building Elements.

Last month, Panasonic began tying manager’s compensation to CO2 emissions targets. Microsoft also uses employee incentives to improve the energy efficiency of its data centers, and DuPont has introduced programs that encourage and support its business units to implement energy efficiency goals.