The 2007 CSR Expo will be held at the Sofitel Philippine Plaza Hotel on July 16~18 in Pasay City. This was announced during a “Walk the Talk” activity with some of the CEO’s of top corporations in the Philippines. They wanted to convey the message to the public that top corporations in the Philippines were trying to do their part to address the climate crisis and other environment issues.
They also highlighted their individual projects in this forum:
- Ayala Corp - Waste collection for recycling in the Makati district in order to reduce the amount of waste going to our landfills.
- Aboitiz - Reef sanctuary rehabilitation in San Remegio Cebu as well as providing methane extracting biodigesters to families in Cebu. Might I add also that Aboitiz is positioning itself to be a renewable energy company by taking the lead in establishing new and acquiring old hydro electric power plants in the Philippines. Reforestation and Conservation in Cebu.
- Shell - Launching of Biodiesel and Ethanol mixed products in support of the Biofuels bill (Hell Yeah!). R&D focused on developing more efficient fuels as well as extracting Fuel from Coal (whoa!, that doesn’t look green to me) via most likely the Fischer-Tropsch process.
Its great that Philippine Corporations are practising CSR in their day to day operations. By getting the big players to take the lead, definitely the Medium and SME’s will follow suit.
I can elaborate on the importance of CSR to the operations of a company via the example of one power plant here in Mindanao whose front gate was peppered by full-auto machine gun fire by some rebels trying to get the support of the populace. They were promoting the perception that powerplants do nothing but pollute the community. This acted as a wake up call to the company to reach out to their host community and change their public image. In turn the company started doing some community work by funding school building construction and other projects to help the community.
This had the effect of endearing them to the community by making them a useful member of it. Since then, nobody dared to do anything against the powerplant or else they will feel the wrath of the local town. I feel that this also had the more longer reaching effect of promoting peace in the region since there was no cause to rally against.
Article here
Category: Asia, Environment
