Your Mitsubishi-brand paper comes from conscientiously managed forests. Mitsubishi Paper Mills is moving systematically to promote responsible management of the world's forests. As a leading user of forest resources, the company has a strong interest in encouraging sustainable forestry development. It therefore has adopted the principles of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), which monitors logging practices and establishes rigorous guidelines for truly sustainable development.   Companies that demonstrate compliance with the council's guidelines earn formal certifications. The certifications authorize the companies to display the FSC logo on their products and in corporate publications. That logo reassures customers about the environmental soundness of the companies' wood production.   Sound forest management begins, of course, with restricting the harvesting of trees to naturally renewable volumes. It also includes exercising care to prevent soil erosion and water pollution. Experts at the FSC have worked out effective practical guidelines for addressing those and other concerns.   The FSC members number 517 organizations in 61 nations. Those organizations represent indigenous peoples, environmental protection groups, forest resource companies and others. The council has certified 386 forests that span a total of 27 million hectares (67 million acres) in 54 nations. It has earned plaudits for its independent stance from chapters of some of the most demanding environmental associations, including Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Rainforest Alliance, Sierra Club and World Wide Fund for Nature.

It loses its threads. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries has developed polymer screws that lose their threads when heated to 120° centigrade. In product recycling, that would eliminate the labor-intensive and time-consuming work of removing screws individually with a power drill. All that a recyling plant would need to do is heat up the old refrigerator, television or whatever, and the screws would just drop out. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is moving to put the thermoscrews on the market in 2004.

It'll convert that carbon dioxide into nanofiber. Mitsubishi Chemical and Kyoto-based Shimadzu Corporation are developing technology to convert carbon dioxide into nanofiber. They aim to recover carbon dioxide released by microorganisms or incinerators at disposal sites for organic waste and convert it into carbon and water. They use a catalyst to cause the carbon dioxide to react with methane gas. Mitsubishi Chemical is refining technology to extract nanofibers of less than 100 nanometers in diameter from the carbon. Mitsubishi Chemical is a Japanese leader in research on commercial applications for carbon nanofiber. Shimadzu, meanwhile, has announced a target of commercializing the carbon dioxide recovery technology by 2004. The two partners are developing a pilot plant to evaluate their technologies.

Plants like this don't let the carbon dioxide get away. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and The Kansai Electric Power Co., Inc., have developed technology jointly to recover carbon dioxide from the exhaust gas of thermal power plants. They have achieved a daily recovery capacity of 200 tons, and they expect to attain between 2,000 tons and 3,000 tons within a year. This technology is applicable to chemical plants, as well as power plants. Plant operators can recover CO2 from reformer units and feed it into downstream processes to increase throughput. In another application, Middle Eastern oil producers will inject recovered CO2 into oil fields to increase output. The partners' recovery technology is 20% more efficient than conventional technologies. They aim to develop units of daily capacity of 5,000 tons by 2005 and 10,000 tons by 2010.