Teigo Iba who became the Director-General of Sumitomo in 1900 initiated a large-scale planting of trees, for restitution of the mountains that had been damaged by air pollution caused by the copper refinery. This activity has been successful to this day, and the once-damaged mountain slopes are now covered with beautiful trees.
Sumimetal Mining, our fully-owned subsidiary headquartered in Hachinohe, is running a program to plant a total of 500,000 trees of Konara oak, Mizunara water oak, and other species that are native to the site of what was once the Hachinohe limestone mine.
On the occasion of the 2009 festival in June, about 1,000 residents and Sumitomo Metals Group's employees joined in planting 11,600 trees. Our tree-planting history thus is continuing.
