Tokyo ‒ The Yokohama Rubber Co., Ltd., announced today that its U.S. subsidiary Yokohama Tire Manufacturing Virginia LLC (YTMV), which manufactures passenger car and light truck tires in Salem, Virginia, received the Environmental Warrior Award presented by the Virginia Water Environment Association (VWEA) as part of VWEA’s 2015 Industrial Waste and Pretreatment Environmental Excellence Awards Program. The Environmental Warrior Award is a new award presented for the first time in 2015 to the company that has made the greatest improvement in their environmental compliance program. The award was presented to YTMV President Tetsuro Murakami at an awards ceremony held in Charlottesville, Virginia, on March 3.

YTMV President Murakami
It is a great honor for YTMV to be the first recipient of the VWEA’s new Environmental Warrior Award. Going forward, all of us at the company will not rest on this laurel but will relentlessly endeavor to protect and improve the local environment in our business and other activities.

The VWEA is a nonprofit organization established in 1947 to protect the water resources of the State of Virginia. Its members include citizens, environmentalists, and state government employees from across the state. The Environmental Warrior Award was presented to YTMV in recognition of the improvement in its compliance with industrial water treatment regulations as well as its environmental conservation efforts over the years. YTMV received ISO 14001 certification for environmental management systems in 2007 and has continued to promote environmental protection and conservation in all its activities.

YTMV succeeded in lowering its industrial waste emissions by 45% from 2012 to 2014, and as of the end of December 2014, it had lowered the percent of waste sent to landfills (the landfill ratio) to 2.5%. YTMV is targeting a 0% landfill ratio in 2015. Also in 2014, YTMV was accepted into the Virginia Environmental Excellence Program (VEEP) with an E4 status, the highest status rating awarded by the program. As part of the program, YTMV will continue its efforts to improve energy efficiency, water resource management, chemical management, and environmental awareness among its employees. The company and its employees are also actively engaged in a number of corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs, including annual clean-up events for nearby roadways and rivers and recycling electronics and papers by the local community.

YTMV, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Yokohama Rubber’s U.S. subsidiary Yokohama Tire Corporation, was established as an independent company through the spinoff of the parent company’s Salem plant in 2014.