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Xperia™: Working towards sustainability
Discover how Sony and Xperia are working to become more sustainable in everything we do.
Our commitment to the environment
To achieve our 'Road to Zero' goal, we are proceeding with various changes to help the environment.
Sony Group's Road to Zero
At Sony, we appreciate that our operations as a corporation are dependent on the good health of the Earth’s environment. That’s why we’ve created our global environmental plan, Road to Zero, which aims to achieve a zero environmental footprint throughout the life cycle of our products and business activities by 2050.
Green Management 2025
Working toward a zero environmental footprint by 2050, Sony sets medium-term environmental targets once every five years. These relate to each stage of the life cycle of our products with respect to climate change, resources, chemical substances, and biodiversity. Our latest set of targets, Green Management 2025, sees Sony progressively reducing all plastic packaging materials for new small products as we move towards total elimination.
SORPLAS™, Sony’s original recycled plastic
In 2011, Sony began practical use of Sustainable Oriented Recycled Plastic (SORPLAS). This recycled plastic, with the flame-retardant properties required for consumer electronics use, was made possible by using a proprietary compounding technology. The unique process combines an original, non-halogen and non-phosphorous flame retardant – itself produced using a Sony-developed process – and waste plastics (polycarbonate resin) from various sources.
Making Xperia more sustainable
Along with Sony’s corporation-wide environmental plans, we’re implementing a range of Xperia-specific sustainability initiatives.
More recycled parts, less impact on the planet
To help reduce our environmental footprint, in our latest device – Xperia 1 V "SORPLAS" has been used to craft many of their key components.
Durable, reliable and sustainable
Original Blended Material is a durable paper-like material made from short growth-cycle plants including bamboo and sugarcane fibres, as well as post-consumer recycled paper. Plants with a short growth cycle generate less CO2 since they can be grown, sorted, and harvested as needed, compared to the logging and life-cycle care for perennials.
Meet "Original Blended Material"
We switched to Original Blended Material for our smartphone packaging in 2023.2 The use of high-quality 100% paper materials contributes both to our own sustainability goals and helps build wider environmental awareness in our users.
Eliminating plastic from Xperia packaging
Although we’ve been focused on reducing the environmental footprint of Xperia packaging for several years, initially we were only able to switch larger pieces of packaging from plastic to paper. As a result, our 2018 Xperia model still used approximately 27% plastic in its packaging. Over time, however, our processes have evolved so we can now remove plastic from even the smallest pieces of packaging, culminating in the Xperia PRO-I’s zero plastic packaging.3
A more sustainable paper policy
As well as working to reduce our use of precious paper resources, we’re also making it a priority to purchase paper based on sustainable policies such as FSC-certified paper and recycled paper. The pulp tray in our smartphone packaging is made from waste paper that cannot be recycled into other paper products. By selecting a raw material that matches the colour of the outer box, it can be moulded as is – no need for bleaching or colouring.
Zero plastic packaging3
In this video our packaging design engineer, Tomoyuki Nishizaki, talks about how we achieved zero plastic packaging3 for the Xperia PRO-I.
Building a sustainable society, together
Along with internal initiatives, Sony also encourages business partners, consumers, and other stakeholders to take action, so we can work together to build a sustainable society. For example, we no longer include USB cables and chargers with Xperia smartphones, since most customers already have one they can use, and we ask Xperia customers to recycle their smartphone’s packaging.
