My Video
Big Question: How can Sony appeal to new investors with their environmental activism, and will how these new investors help push Sony's environmental goals?
Background: Sony's Green Mission
Sony is a multinational company based in Japan. They are a major technology company that produces game consoles, video games, music, and film. Sony is most famously known for their PlayStations, the latest release of the PS5 being in early November 2020. Although they are an extensive conglomerate, they have also shown environmental awareness with their new pledge with the Playing For The Planet Alliance, a mission started at the Climate Summit at the New York UN Headquarters. “In joining the Alliance, members have made commitments ranging from integrating green activations in games, reducing their emissions and supporting the global environmental agenda through initiatives ranging from planting millions of trees to reducing plastic in their products.” (playing4theplanet.org)
Even before the UN alliance, Sony has been working to further their environmental impact with the launch of their Road to Zero environmental plan in 2010. The message of the project is to reach a net-zero environmental footprint throughout the entire lifecycle of their products by 2050. Overall, the project has been successful at lowering CO2 emissions, generated waste and greenhouse gas emissions at Sony sites. In addition, Sony is managing their chemical substances in collaboration with Japan law and is currently running an experimental plan within Japan to recycle small gaming consoles - including extracting precious metals such as gold.
Investors Eye: The Downfalls of Sony
Although, “Sony’s $499 PlayStation 5 console is no longer selling at a loss” (Verge) a large portion of their products are still causing the company to lose money.
They faced bad management from their previous CEO, Howard Stringer. Known for ruining Sony with "stock having fallen more than 75% during his tenure as CEO" (aol).
Sony is fighting fierce competitors: When Microsoft launched a buyout bid for leading video game producer Activision Blizzard, Sony's shares fell 11% that day (The Motley Fool)
Sony's Statistics
A history of Sony's stock prices (Black) compared with Microsoft (Yellow), Apple (Pink), and Samsung (Blue) since the start of Sony stock in 1984 (Barchart).
(143) 米津玄師 - POP SONG - YouTube
(One of many new PlayStation Promotion Videos)
Photo Gallery
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Is Gaming Sustainable? What are its Environmental Impacts?
Gaming is not sustainable due to its large carbon footprint
(pcgamesn)
(tudelft)
Big Question: How can Sony appeal to new investors with their environmental activism, and will how these new investors help push Sony's environmental goals?
My Two-Part Solution
Solution 1: Sony could attract more investors by collaborating and creating a mutual fund with other Japan-based companies that are also working to improve the environment. This new set of mutual funds would allow Sony to market themselves as more of an Impact Investment under a fresh ticker symbol - "80 percent of the reviewed studies demonstrate that prudent sustainability practices have a positive influence on investment performance” (USSIF.org). The investor would also be able to diversify their portfolio with a sustainable set of companies. Furthermore, impact investments will not only attract investors looking to be more environmentally conscious, but as taken from the “Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment, many studies have shown that the performance of impact investments has usually met, and sometimes exceeded, the performance of traditional investments” (fidelity).
With the development of a mutual fund, investors are able to easily invest in environmental funds that draw on intersectionality between IT/gaming and environmental activism. Ergo, the new mutual funds of Sony and others will attract new investors to support the company, and in turn these investors will be able to help the environment through their investments.
Mutual Fund Companies
A few companies I have found that stay within the “IT/Metal” branch:
(FELTY) Fuji Electric “manufactures power semiconductors that enable electronic devices to function more efficiently. Its silicon-carbide chips improve on the normal silicon chips because they have higher heat resistance, leading to less energy being wasted in devices such as inverters.”
(MIELY) Mitsubishi Electric “Electrical-equipment manufacturer provides devices and "ingredients" for zero-energy buildings, which reduce the net energy consumption to zero.”
(NISTF) Nippon Steel & (JFEEF) JFE Holdings, both companies of steel and iron industry are very efficient and have pledged to become carbon neutral by 2100. (thestreet)
Solution 2: A call to action
The second part of my solution helps tackle a prominent problem within Japan, which is their waste management goals. Japan is a very industrialized country and has a large portion of its products and energy used within a small area of space. Paired with the large amount of fossil fuel imports, waste management is becoming an increasing important problem. While Sony is working to be sustainable, in 2018, the use of its virgin plastics (derived from fossil fuels) “was actually up 2.4 percent from its 2013 figure” (verge).
Currently, Sony does have their nationwide Take Back recycling program, however, I found this website hard to navigate and was wondering if there are easier ways the general public could find out where to recycling Sony Products.
For my proposal, I would implement that Sony products all come with a scannable QR code in their packaging that would send customers to a site with all recycling companies that will responsibly recycle Sony products. The list would first be created for Japanese citizens as a way to kick-off the project. There would be a function to sorted by region or postal code for further information and each company listing their drop-off addresses or mailable addresses.
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Bibliography Link
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eUcqiMgqdqxXJ9uA4gBj9YZEFVQA10g6c50vRy_BlwA/edit?usp=sharing
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