Reasons given for the award:

• In June 1992 Honda issued its new corporate policy on the environment, committing itself to make all corporate activities contribute actively to the betterment of human health and the environment, and establishing demanding targets. Alongside this, Honda issued daily activity guidelines to all its employees describing how the lifecycles of all its products would follow this policy at each stage - promoting recycling, the saving of energy and resources, and reductions in the production of waste materials and pollutants throughout these various processes. The company further encouraged all its employees to take a proactive stance on behalf of themselves as members both of the company and of society to promote better health for humans and the environment alike. The idea was to influence society positively and thereby to receive higher recognition from society.

• To promote higher recyclability, Honda instituted a code numbering system for recyclable parts and brought in new construction designs to make its products easier to disassemble.

• In November 1991, Honda became the first Japanese automaker to start collecting plastic car bumpers and recycling them into parts and parts boxes.

• Honda has actively pursued R&D into vehicles that run on alternative fuels (electric power, compressed natural gas, solar power, etc.)

(Source: Social Contributions of Major Companies 1998, edited by the Corporate Social Contribution Survey Committee of the Asahi Shimbun Cultural Foundation, and published by Katsuhiko Eguchi of PHP Research)

Senior Managing Director Kensuke Fukatsu receives the award.

The award certificate.