Human rights are the fundamental rights that have been granted to all people. When taking into consideration processes back to the stage of the procurement of raw materials, there are an extremely large number of people involved in Yokohama Rubber’s business and an extremely diverse range of human rights that should be respected. In addition, as our business activities expand on a global level and we become increasingly involved with a diverse range of people, the probability of having a direct impact or indirect impact on human rights violations increases.
For that reason, we believe that it is important to fulfill our responsibility towards respecting human rights while taking into consideration the range of our impact, and accordingly the Yokohama Rubber Group Action Guidelines state that human rights should be respected both inside and outside of the company, and stipulate the actions that should be taken by employees to this end.

Rubber is one of the most important raw materials used in manufacturing Yokohama Rubber’s products, including tires. The regions where rubber is produced are affected by various risks relating to environmental destruction, human rights and labor issues, etc. As part of our response to this situation, in January 2017 the Yokohama Rubber Co., Ltd. announced its support for the goals of the Sustainable Natural Rubber Initiative (SNR-i) as advocated by the International Rubber Study Group (IRSG), an inter-governmental organization that brings together representatives of the governments of both natural rubber and synthetic rubber producer nations and consumer nations; Yokohama Rubber also announced that it would be participating in SNR-i activities. In 2018, Yokohama Rubber formulated its Procurement Policy for the Sustainable Natural Rubber.
This policy indicates Yokohama Rubber’s approach and initiatives for natural rubber procurement, along with its requests to suppliers. The Yokohama Rubber Group shares this policy with the entire supply chain that is related in an aim to achieve the sustainability of natural rubber.

Kazuhito Yanadori
Head of Raw Materials Procurement Department, Global Procurement Division

• We will respect human rights both inside and outside of the company, and respond sincerely to complaints concerning human rights and make improvements to ensure that there is no child labor or forced labor at the Group or our suppliers.

The following items have been established as the main action items that the Yokohama Rubber Group will address first, taking into account the level of impact of business activities and the level of social interest.

Human Rights (442KB)