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. 

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Logo for Road to Zero
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.

Logo for Green Management 2025
A small vial of white plastic granules next to a pile of black plastic granules and a pile of white ones
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 devices, "SORPLAS™" has been used to craft many of their key components. We even used it to craft the entire bodyof the Style Cover with Stand.

Front shot of an Xperia 10 V in a purple Style Cover with colour options standing behind in purple, green, white and black

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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. The use of high-quality 100% paper materials contributes both to our own sustainability goals and helps build wider environmental awareness in our users.

Image of the front and back of the Xperia packagaing made with Original Blended Material on a white background
Flow chart showing reduction of plastic in Xperia packaging from 2018 to the launch of Xperia PRO-I in 2021
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.

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.

A pile of crumpled paper

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Zero plastic packaging

In this video our packaging design engineer, Tomoyuki Nishizaki, talks about how we achieved zero plastic packaging for the Xperia PRO-I.

Eliminated plastic from shipping package

Along with our previous plastic-reduction efforts, we've now even removed the plastic tape used to seal our shipping cartons from the factory and replaced it with paper tape.

Applicable models: Xperia 1 VI, Xperia 10 VI, Xperia 1 V, Xperia 5 V

Cardboard box wrapped in paper tape
Illustration of a USB cable and a charger with a green line crossing it out, plus an icon of planet earth and an Xperia smartphone
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.