Quantitatively monitoring and analyzing resource flow (input, accumulation, output), and using the information gained as basic data is an important aspect of reducing resource consumption and the waste generated by business activities. However, unlike manufacturing industries, which procure raw materials directly and can thus easily monitor resource input, non-manufacturing industries such as telecommunications, which procure ready-made equipment rather than raw materials, are unable to monitor resource input on a raw material basis.

NTT Energy and Environment Systems Laboratories (NTT EESL) has accordingly been studying resource utilization by telecommunications companies. NTT EESL is currently researching both top-down and bottom-up techniques for analyzing resource input, using various management data for the former, and data on resources contained in procured items for the latter. The results of its calculations for the top-down approach are featured in NTT East and NTT West's CSR reports.

NTT LOGISCO has developed ECO-PRA^*1, a management system for keeping track of returnable transport items (RTI) such as pallets, containers and drums, and started offering it in January 2011 as an SaaS^*2 service.

ECO-PRA can help to improve RTI circulation and prevent uneven distribution and shipment delays by enabling the real-time sharing of information on individual RTI location, movement history, inventory, etc. between multiple logistics sites, and as such, supporting the practice of the 5Rs of Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Return and Recycle. Since ECO-PRA is offered as an SaaS service, it is low cost, quickly deployable and very scalable, enabling speedy and flexible response to expansion of usage area or business volume.

ECO-PRA was originally developed as a group environmental activity to manage plastic drums for telephone pole support cables, and by fiscal 2012 had been introduced to four logistics centers in Nagoya, Sakai, Kanazawa and Saitama, managing a total of 6,720 drums. It was deployed in all NTT Group logistics centers except Okinawa by September 2012, and was already being used to manage optical cable plastic drums by July 2012.

Going forward, NTT LOGISCO plans to make ECO-PRA even easier to use by engineering its integration with warehouse management systems and logistics information solutions that make use of smartphones and other mobile terminals.

NTT LOGISCO is helping businesses to dispose of large volumes of confidential documents that they no longer have need of. It developed its own SS-BOX secure disposal bins and recycling system for the safe and simple collection and processing of such documents, and by fiscal 2011 had installed a total of about 9,000 of these bins in companies throughout Japan.

It empties the bins regularly, shredding the collected documents for recycling as toilet paper or cushioning material for packaging. In fiscal 2012, it collected and recycled 11,713 tons of confidential documents using this system.

From December 2010, it started to offer the iSS-BOX, a high function version fitted with an NTT DOCOMO FOMA transmission module, to drive the further spread of the service. The iSS-BOX automatically notifies NTT LOGISCO of the volume of documents inserted, reducing collection costs by enabling collection at just the right time, and relieving the customer of the need to notify NTT LOGISCO. Over 400 of these new bins had been installed by the end of 2011.

This confidential document collection service was approved under the NTT Group's Environmental Solution Certification System in July 2011.