Award of Excellence conferred to Otsuka Pharmaceutical for its product Pocari Sweat Ice Slurry in the FY2021 Osaka Climate Change Action Awards.

Date of interview	May 16, 2022
Interviewees	Emi Mitsuba, Vice Chief, Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Promotion Group, Zero-Carbon Energy Policy Section Keiko Yasumatsuya, Chief Researcher, Climate Change Group, Environmental Research Department, Local Climate Change Adaptation Center in Osaka Daisuke Akagi, Deputy Manager, Nutraceuticals Business Unit, Kansai First Branch, Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.

First, could each of you give us an overview of the organization you work for?

Ms. Mitsuba: Osaka Prefecture − where I work − has been offering wide-ranging support programs to the prefectural residents and businesses and implementing measures to promote energy conservation and spread the use of renewable energy across the prefecture.
In March 2021, the prefectural government created its action plan for addressing global warming and set the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by the year 2030 from the 2013 baseline with a view to achieving net-zero CO2 emissions by 2050. The aforementioned plan also serves as the prefecture’s official climate change adaptation plan, pursuant to which we have been implementing adaptation measures across Osaka.

Ms. Yasumatsuya: The Local Climate Change Adaptation Center in Osaka that I work for was established by the Research Institute of Environment, Agriculture and Fisheries, Osaka Prefecture (RIEAFO) in April 2020 based on appointment by the prefectural government. The RIEAFO is a comprehensive research institute whose activities encompass the environment, agriculture/forestry, fishery, and food in a cross-disciplinary manner, which is almost unprecedented in Japan. The RIEAFO is engaged in technological development to address climate change in agriculture and is also conducting various types of monitoring surveys in fishery, etc.
In addition to increasing the stock of technology and knowledge in those fields, the RIEAFO is also building its collaborative network with a variety of survey and research institutes and universities across Japan as well as with other concerned departments of the prefectural government, etc. As a sub-organization of this general research institute that is the RIEAFO, Local Climate Change Adaptation Center in Osaka is conducting various surveys and studies on climate change adaptation and facilitating public awareness and education campaigns for the prefectural residents and businesses.

Mr. Akagi: My employer, Otsuka Pharmaceutical, mainly operates two core businesses, one of which is the pharmaceutical business that encompasses from medical diagnosis to treatment, with the other being the nutraceutical business for supporting day-to-day health maintenance and improvement, under its corporate philosophy of creating unique and innovative products that improve the health and well-being of people worldwide. The office where I am assigned is the Kansai First Branch of the Nutraceuticals Business Unit, which operates across four prefectures, namely Osaka, Hyogo, Nara, and Wakayama. As social health relations staff, my activities encompass Osaka and Nara Prefectures.

Please explain to us about your collaborative structure.

Ms. Mitsuba: In April 2020, Osaka Prefecture appointed the RIEAFO as its local Climate Change Adaptation Center for gathering and disseminating information on climate change adaptation across the prefecture. This appointment was aimed at facilitating the implementation of climate change adaptation measures in the prefecture based on the information gathered and analyzed by the Center, leveraging its scientific insights, future prediction capability, etc.
Osaka Prefecture has also been cooperating with a host of private enterprises and universities in projects that are designed to revitalize local communities and resolve various social issues in the prefecture. In this connection, Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. and Osaka Prefecture entered into a comprehensive cooperation agreement in 2016, pursuant to which the parties have been conducting joint projects in wide-ranging areas such as health, education, disaster prevention/mitigation, etc.

Please tell us about the status of Osaka Prefecture’s activities relating to climate change impacts and adaptation.

Ms. Mitsuba: As far as Osaka Prefecture is concerned, we revised the prefecture’s action plan for addressing global warming in December 2017 and classified the effects of climate change we had identified and their associated adaptation measures into seven different categories, such as agriculture, aquatic environment, natural ecosystems, etc. Then in 2018, we created a list of climate change impacts and mitigation measures that would be officially adopted, and incorporated it into the prefecture’s official climate change adaptation plan in 2019 pursuant to Japan’s Climate Change Adaptation Act.

Ms. Yasumatsuya: In terms of the Local Climate Change Adaptation Center in Osaka activities, we hosted seminars on how to deal with hot weather in FY2021, as part of our public awareness and education campaigns, for instance. These events were offered to people working in education, social welfare, and agriculture to arm them with knowledge on the topic of climate change, share some examples of effective heat alleviation techniques, and provide tips related to emergency care.
In addition, we have been organizing lectures and workshops on climate change to municipal employees, disseminating information to the prefectural residents, businesses, and public employees on the topic, and running public awareness and education campaigns.
As for our survey and research activities, we took part in a project sponsored by the Ministry of the Environment for two years from FY2020, where we studied the efficacy of air-cooled work clothes integrating electric fans as a heat-coping technology in agriculture and construction, including what the users thought of the device as they wore it. We also have been studying the effects of climate change on agriculture and conducted literature research on the types of crops, etc. that would be impacted by the phenomenon in the future.
Findings from these activities are posted on the Center’s website for the public to see.

Please tell us what led to the renewal of the Osaka Climate Change Action Awards and along with us an overview of the awards program in its current form.

Ms. Mitsuba: In FY2007, Osaka Prefecture started hosting the Osaka Stop Global Warming Awards to help facilitate both mitigative and adaptive measures for addressing climate change in the prefecture, and we renewed the program in FY2021 and started giving awards to exemplary practitioners of climate change adaptation measures as well as mitigation measures, along with which the program has been renamed the Osaka Climate Change Action Awards.

Otsuka Pharmaceutical won the Award of Excellence last year, for its product Pocari Sweat Ice Slurry. Please tell us what you thought of the product when you reviewed it and also what your expectations are as to what the award recipient could possibly do in the future in terms of related activities.

Ms. Mitsuba: As I also tried the product myself, it felt like my body was being cooled from within, perhaps due to the fluidity of the beverage which is different from sherbet. When I was still a student, I used to bring my frozen beverage to school in a PET bottle, but the content had gotten warm or was still frozen when I wanted to drink it, so it was of suboptimal use. Meanwhile, you can consume Pocari Sweat Ice Slurry when it is still frozen. In this regard, the concept of pre-cooling − which is a technique being promoted by Otsuka Pharmaceutical to cool down the inner body temperature before engaging in physical activity − is quite innovative and might be a significantly effective way of preventing hyperthermia in our view.

Could you tell us on what specific merit did Local Climate Change Adaptation Center in Osaka recommend granting the award to Otsuka Pharmaceutical?

Ms. Yasumatsuya: As the risk of hyperthermia has been on the rise due to climate change, we thought the company’s development of the frozen beverage was important in that it could be consumed frozen to cool the body down from within, while serving the function of water and sodium replenishment efficiently. Also the company’s provision of the product to fire fighters and other activities and its mass distribution were all part of main reasons behind our decision. Another reason was because we believe the company has been highly instrumental in raising awareness and educating the public on what are some of the effective ways to deal with hyperthermia, by disseminating information on hyperthermia prevention and first aid techniques in addition to providing the product.

May we ask what led to the creation and commercialization of Pocari Sweat Ice Slurry, what kind of product it is, and any unique technology that is used to manufacture the product?

Mr. Akagi: Although Otsuka Pharmaceutical has been working on ways to prevent hyperthermia for many years, the environmental changes including global warming and the number of hyperthermia cases requiring ambulance services not going down convinced us that we would need to come up novel solutions.
Then, because what hyperthermia essentially is, as a physiological phenomenon, is an excessive rise in body temperature, we focused on the core body temperature and studied how to efficiently cool the body from inside using the heat absorption reaction of ice, which led to the creation of Pocari Sweat Ice Slurry.
The product can be frozen in a freezer and then be stored at normal temperature. Even when it is frozen again, its same slurry texture reappears. To make this possible, Otsuka Pharmaceutical developed its proprietary technology that would involve dissolution and freezing of the solid particles of ingredients into liquid form at high concentration to chemically create the fluid product. The entire development process apparently took three years to create this product − dubbed “drinkable ice” − as it was highly difficult to maintain its fluidity and well-balanced flavor in its frozen state. In the initial phase, Otsuka Pharmaceutical collaborated with the University of Occupational and Environmental Health and the Kitakyushu City Fire Department to develop the product mainly targeting firefighters and other professionals working under extreme heat conditions, but the product is designed so that it can be effectively used by the masses.

Please tell us how you felt when Otsuka Pharmaceutical received the Award of Excellence from the Osaka Climate Change Action Awards program.

Mr. Akagi: We were highly delighted that Pocari Sweat Ice Slurry had received the recognition for being such a product that could be consumed as a novel hyperthermia prevention method involving the cooling down of one’s core body temperature, in addition to Otsuka Pharmaceutical’s hallmark activities of collaboration with municipal bodies. This was a testament to our successful collaboration with municipal bodies, which in turn enabled us to work with related local organizations and groups, culminating in the development of a platform through which to disseminate hyperthermia information to the general public, which we could not have accomplished alone. In this regard, we feel there is a strong need for such local coordination and collaboration to take place more regularly.

Please tell us about any unique approach you are implementing at Otsuka Pharmaceutical to promote understanding and improve awareness on the topic of climate change adaptation among its employees.

Mr. Akagi: Personally, I always thought hyperthermia was one of the many issues related to health. However, through our public-private cooperation project with the energy policy section of the Osaka prefectural government, I learned that hyperthermia was also considered an environmental issue resulting from global warming and other aspects of climate change and started viewing it quite differently. Since then, given the global magnitude of this major issue that is climate change adaptation, we started communicating to various municipalities the necessity of local coordination and collaboration so that we could facilitate the implementation of adaptation measures at local level first. This approach is also clearly communicated within Otsuka Pharmaceutical.

Mr. Akagi, you also have the title of hyperthermia prevention advisor. Care to explain what it is?

Mr. Akagi: This is related to the certification program being sponsored by the Ministry of the Environment, entitled the Heat Illness Prevention Communication Project. The program is open to everyone and if you complete its training course, you become a certified advisor. It is a joint project between Otsuka Pharmaceutical and the Ministry of the Environment, which is being promoted nationwide. This certification program is, of course, actively promoted among the employees of Otsuka Pharmaceutical, but the ultimate goal is to widely spread the program across Japan to train as many people as possible that could help educate the public on the topic of hyperthermia prevention, so we are in the midst of its promotion campaign.

As the summer approaches, does the Local Climate Change Adaptation Center in Osaka plan on intensifying its effort in implementing hyperthermia prevention measures?

Ms. Yasumatsuya: Certainly. We will certainly address hyperthermia in our activities but will also communicate to the public about the various changes that are caused by climate change affecting agricultural and fishery products and how they are related to people’s everyday lives.
Since the RIEAFO is a general research institute, we have been taking measures to address issues in agriculture and fishery based on our prediction. However, we still have room to improve in terms of communicating related information to the prefectural residents. So we intend to step up our public awareness campaigns targeting the prefectural residents through the RIEAFO in addition to our activities involving farmers, fishers, etc.

How are you facilitating cooperation between Osaka Prefecture and its municipalities?

Ms. Mitsuba: Osaka Prefecture, in conjunction with Osaka City, formulated the Osaka heat island countermeasure facilitation plan in March 2015, specifying the conceptual approach, goals, and activities in executing measures to address the issues related to urban heat islands across the prefecture. This plan has two explicit goals, one of which is to bring down the nighttime temperatures in residential areas to eventually reduce the number of tropical nights by 30% from the baseline year 2000, discounting the effects of global warming. The other goal is to utilize existing cool spots and also create new ones so that the extreme heat conditions in outdoor spaces during daytime in summer can be improved. So we are promoting both mitigative and adaptive measures simultaneously, with the former mainly focused on the reduction of anthropogenic heat release, etc. and the latter aimed at improving extreme heat conditions, etc.

Please share your future outlook with us.

Ms. Mitsuba: Due to the effects of global warming and its urban heat islands, Osaka Prefecture is experiencing the rise in temperature at a faster rate than the global average. In addition, since the prefecture consists of highly urbanized areas with high population density and industrial concentration, we believe its exposure to the risks associated with climate change is more significant than other parts of Japan, in terms of the prefectural residents’ well-being and industrial operations. So we intend to continuously promote measures for business operators across Osaka to better adapt to climate change by presenting awards to excellent business practices again this year relating to climate change adaptation − as exemplified by last year’s award recipient Otsuka Pharmaceutical − and raising public awareness on the topic that way.

Ms. Yasumatsuya: As part of our public awareness and education campaigns, we plan to continuously hold seminars for people working in education and social welfare on how to deal with hot weather, thereby imparting knowledge on climate change, teaching specific techniques for dealing with hot weather, and providing useful first-aid tips, etc.
In addition, our plans for this fiscal year include providing seminars to people working in agriculture, where we will explain what sorts of negative effects on their agricultural operations could manifest and what they could do to counter those effects based on our future climate prediction data, and also introduce to them some techniques that they could apply to address hot weather conditions on their respective work sites. Furthermore, we intend to continuously provide climate change seminars and workshops for municipal employees across the prefecture.
In terms of our survey and research activities, we will continuously measure WBGT as our choice of heat index across the prefecture, share our findings to improve the circumstances, and also promote public awareness on the hyperthermia risk alert.
Moreover, since Osaka borders the ocean and has many rivers and reservoirs, it is ostensibly susceptible to storm surges and floods. So we are starting to consider about launching public awareness and education campaigns for the prevention and mitigation of these potential disasters.

Mr. Akagi: We will continue to actively develop our platform for local cooperation and coordination and implement programs that are conducive to the promotion of sustainable activities across wide-ranging fields.