How NTT DATA Is Building a Circular Economy From Japan's Past

Edo-era economics: Japan's original circular model

David Costa's journey to leading NTT DATA's sustainability efforts began in 2014, when he was an executive at everis Group, a major Spanish IT company. He recalls that one of the key factors in everis's decision to be acquired by NTT DATA was not only the company's financial foundation but their shared sense of corporate values. Following the acquisition and ahead of the 2023 reorganization into a three-company structure, Costa was approached about becoming Chief Sustainability Business Officer at NTT DATA, Inc.

"I asked the leadership: 'Do you want to be a company that wears sustainability as a badge, or do you want to be a company that actually delivers sustainability through business?'" Costa recalls. "They said, very clearly, 'The latter.' That's when I said yes."

In 2025, when David Costa was appointed head of sustainability management promotion at NTT DATA Group, he was tasked with executing a unified sustainability strategy across the company. While developing this strategy, rather than looking to the future for the solutions, he looked to Japan's past. One conversation from this period with Toshi Fujiwara, then the senior executive vice president at NTT DATA, on the business philosophies of Japan's Edo period, played a crucial role in how the company would approach sustainability.

Japan during that era operated under conditions of limited resources and near-complete isolation; waste was unacceptable and smart business was essential. What emerged was an economy built on reuse and repair. Everyday objects —from bowls and umbrellas to metal tools — were fixed rather than discarded. Even human waste was preserved and used for agriculture. In Japan, this ethos is summed up in the phrase "mottainai," a concept that expresses regret over waste.

Alongside this was "sanpo-yoshi," a business philosophy of equal importance to the merchants of that era. Literally meaning "Three Way Satisfaction," it placed significance on transactions being good for the buyer, good for the seller and good for society.

From mottainai to the Three P's

For Costa, these ideas were a blueprint for how NTT could realize a better world through business. These philosophies ended up getting distilled into what NTT DATA now calls its Three P's–the framework guiding its sustainability strategy across global operations.

The first is Planet Positive, which focuses on reducing the environmental footprint of business through technology and, where possible, contributing to environmental regeneration. The second is People Positive, centered on improving quality of life and ensuring that digital transformation benefits society broadly. The third is Prosperity Positive, aimed at enabling long-term, sustainable growth for customers and communities alike.

Tomoki Yamane, who heads the sustainability business office at NTT DATA Group, sees this approach as uniquely Japanese, but globally applicable. "Japanese people and Japanese companies have a role to play; the circular economy is in their DNA," he says.

As emerging technologies ramp up global energy demands, Yamane sees this as a chance for cooperation. "We have the opportunity to take various solutions born in Japan and expand them globally," he says. "While also bringing leading European examples to Japan."

According to Costa, in the environmental field, Europe is characterized by a regulatory-driven approach, while Japan and others emphasize innovation and circularity.

Artificial Intelligence, Data Centers and the Energy Wall

NTT DATA operates 1,500 megawatts of data centers across Asia, Europe and the United States, with their data centers among the top global operators by revenue. Keeping those facilities running efficiently — particularly as AI workloads surge — has become an urgent challenge.

To address this, NTT DATA opened a dedicated testing facility known as the Data Center Trial Field in Noda, where new cooling technologies can be evaluated under real-world conditions. "The facility is equipped with state-of-the-art cooling technologies and high-efficiency equipment, enabling testing of solutions aimed at decarbonizing data centers and optimizing energy use," said Kouhei Kurotaki, who leads the project. "Since 30 to 40% of data center power consumption is used to process heat from servers, we have begun exploring Direct Liquid-Cooling (DLC), which can handle heat more efficiently."

Left: With liquid-based cooling methods, coolant is circulated through cold plates attached to major heat-generating components such as GPUs and CPUs.

Right: Supermicro liquid-cooled racks are designed to prevent coolant leakages when pipes are attached or removed, allowing servers to be installed and removed during maintenance, even while in operation.

The Data Center Trial Field allows NTT DATA to reduce their own energy consumption, but it’s also a means of developing scalable solutions that can be implemented across the industry. At the facility, information exchanges and trials are conducted with various other players in the data center industry, considering how solutions like liquid-based cooling can be implemented in other facilities.

This outward-facing mindset runs through much of NTT DATA’s sustainability strategy. Backed by roughly ¥250 billion (approximately $1.6 billion at current exchange rates) in annual research and development investment across the NTT Group, the company is working to turn internal innovation into platforms other organizations can use.

Turning Emissions Data into a Shared Infrastructure

One example is C-Turtle, a tool designed to help companies visualize greenhouse gas emissions across their supply chains. Measuring emissions beyond a company's own operations — particularly those of suppliers — has long been a stumbling block for corporate climate strategies.

C-Turtle addresses that challenge by drawing on primary emissions data from CDP, the London-based nonprofit that runs one of the world’s most widely used environmental disclosure systems. NTT DATA is the only company in Japan with a licensed agreement to use CDP's underlying data in this way.

The result is a clearer picture of emissions exposure across industries. Today, about 3,000 companies in Japan — including rail operators, chemical manufacturers and financial institutions — use the platform. Increasingly, it is being adopted by banks and regional lenders to support emissions-reduction efforts among their portfolio companies, including small and midsize enterprises.

Scaling Sustainability Beyond Borders

Sustainability strategies do not exist in a vacuum. Regulatory approaches vary widely by country, and so do market incentives. Europe has tended to push progress through regulation, while Japan and other markets have leaned more heavily on innovation and efficiency.
Costa argues that this diversity makes collaboration more important, not less.

"We focus on companies rather than countries," he says. "The market for sustainability services is expanding quickly, and there is a clear financial case for companies to act and gain access to capital that depends on it."

He points to organizations such as the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, whose more than 250 corporate members collectively account for a significant share of global emissions. The vast majority of executives within that group, Costa notes, say they plan to continue investing in net-zero and sustainability initiatives.

Looking ahead, Yamane believes the next phase of sustainability will demand coordination across industries, not just within individual sectors. "We're thinking about how we can create cross-industry platforms as systems," he says. "That's where we can contribute with NTT's culture of connecting."

Today, NTT operates in more than 50 countries worldwide and continues to expand. Having pledged to achieve net-zero carbon emissions across its supply chain by 2040, Costa sees this collaborative spirit as the key to getting there. "That's the nice thing about sustainability, you don't have to compete," he says. "That's why our team remains open-minded and optimistic."