Blue Value™ / Rose Value™

The Mitsui Chemicals Group, whose five social contribution areas in its Corporate Mission include “promoting human well-being,” lists “a comfortable society in which people can enjoy healthy lives and well-being” and “an inclusive society creating diverse value” as its ideal future society and aims to realize this through its business activities. The Group belongs in the upstream process and provides products and services broadly to a variety of industries, which makes it difficult to grasp the roles that their features and characteristics play in the final use. That is why, in order to truly realize our ideal future society through business activities, the Group believes it is important to share with its various stakeholders, including direct and indirect customers, how its products and services contribute to society throughout their life cycles. Based on this idea, Rose Value™ was designed to evaluate contributions focusing mainly on those associated with QOL improvement, and to visualize their values.

Rose Value™ is assessed based on three contribution categories: (1) Enriching life and society; (2) Extending healthy life-span; and (3) Protecting food. Based on the needs of social challenges such as the targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG Targets), we set our unique assessment index, the Rose Value™ Index, from social issue perspectives, such as universal design and amenity, resilient and smart city, universal health coverage, and food security, and we evaluate and review for certification based on these indices how the value provided by our Group’s products and services contribute to QOL improvements. The assessment index is reviewed accordingly to reflect changes in the environment. In response to the changing challenges and needs of society, we made an amendment in FY2019 to add a category to the assessment index for contribution to sustainable communities, including disaster prevention/mitigation and longer infrastructure life.
For evaluation and review, we not only evaluate the contributions of the end products, but evaluate extensively the contributions of the intermediate processing stage as well as the contributions to the supply chain. This is because we believe evaluating the value of products and services throughout their life cycle will lead to maximizing the value of their contribution to improving QOL for society as a whole.

Our MR™ series products are used as ophthalmic lens materials due to their optical properties. Their high refractive index and strength can support the way people who wish to improve their vision see, so the products can be described as contributing to “Supporting physical well-being.” They also contribute to “Improving comfort in people’s lives,” as they enable thinner and lighter glasses and improve the comfort of glasses, which may allow them to be worn for longer hours. For these reasons, the MR™ series is certified as Rose Value™ product under two contribution categories; “extending healthy life-span” and “enriching life and society.”
“Improving comfort in people’s lives” is an element for realizing the social contribution of “Enriching life and society,” which is the broader concept, and simply “becoming more convenient/comfortable” is not considered applicable. For example, ophthalmic lens material products with medium or lower refractive indices are certified as Rose Value™ under “Supporting physical well-being,” but not certified as Rose Value™ from the perspective of “Improving comfort in people’s lives” due to insufficient contribution impact. The focus is on whether they help solve social challenges, and we seek advice and views from external experts regarding the validity of certification in terms of the impact of social contribution.