Concern for the Environment

TRW’s environmental programs focus on three areas: addressing past environmental impacts, reducing current environmental impacts, and preventing future environmental intrusions. TRW has created this comprehensive approach to environmental management in order to sustain its efforts for many years to come.

The lead-based solder alloys used for 50 years in the electronics industry are being phased out, and TRW has been a leader in this effort in the automotive sector.

Product Stewardship

Product stewardship involves TRW striving to reduce the environmental impacts over the life-cycle of products while taking into consideration the requirements of the company, customers, and legal and regulatory agencies.

TRW recognizes that, as a manufacturer, it has the greatest ability, and therefore the greatest responsibility, to reduce the HS&E impacts of its products. Key components of TRW's product stewardship efforts to reduce the overall environmental impacts over the life-cycle of TRW's products are:

• Supply Chain Management - By properly managing the supply value chain, improvement opportunities are identified and implemented.
• ELV Compliance - The European End-of-Life Vehicles Directive, Japan's Recycling Law, and other regulations restrict the automotive use of certain prohibited substances.
• IMDS Reporting - The International Material Data System (IMDS) is an effective global industry standard tool for collecting automotive materials/substance information necessary to meet legal and customer ELV requirements.
• Design for HS&E - This program helps to ensure TRW meets current and future regulatory and customer requirements by integrating HS&E considerations into the company's Global Development Product Introduction Management (GDPIM).
• GDPIM addresses all phases of the product and process development, providing a standard HS&E Assessment tool to be used by engineering globally.
• Residuals Management (including take-back obligations and recyclability) - This program takes proactive steps to reduce current environmental impacts through reduced resource usage by optimizing parts packaging and materials.

Remediation

TRW’s Environmental Remediation program reduces environmental footprints of past and present operations through removing, reducing or containing environmental impacts while working with government agencies to complete these activities in a timely manner.

A TRW site uses this equipment for remediation before returning groundwater to the public system.

The TRW teams also apply continuous improvement methods such as Six Sigma to the remediation function to reduce risks associated with remediation efforts.