Social « Nesmith's Notes

Eco-learning programme raises awareness among students

Filed in Education | Responsibility | Social | Sustainability

Posted on August 18, 2011, Thursday

GREEN IDEAS: (From left) Panasonic Malaysia’s managing director Jeff Lee, Maruo, deputy director-general of Ministry of Education, Dr Khair Mohamad Yusof and Matsui showcase the PGELP programme – a Panasonic’s corporate citizenship activity slated for helping to raise the environmental awareness of the younger generation, at the same time promoting Panasonic’s eco brand image through communicating its eco-activities at the ‘eco ideas’ factory.

KUCHING: Panasonic Malaysia Sdn Bhd’s (Panasonic Malaysia) employees will take the role of teachers to students at school on environmental lessons, using specially-designed modules.

Undertaking the task of teaching 10,000 students by 2012, the group will bring these students to ‘eco ideas’ factory, which manufactures liquid-crystal display televisions (LCD TVs) in Shah Alam, Selangor.

Towards making the trip not only educational, but fun and interactive for the participants as well, the students will take part in contests and exhibitions where they stand a chance to win study trips to Paris.

To kick-start this challenge, Panasonic Malaysia launched the ‘Panasonic Global Eco Education Programme’ (PGELP), organised in collaboration with the Ministry of Education.

Concurrently, the group also introduced its first ‘eco ideas’ factory called Panasonic AVC Networks Malaysia.

“The world is now facing a great turning point in shifting toward a sustainable society. We have no choice but to be eco conscious if we want to leave future generations a world they can live in. Amid such trends, Panasonic has decided to accelerate its environmental sustainability management further,” remarked Panasonic Corporation Japan’s associate director Masaru Maruo.

“Panasonic has dedicated itself to being a green innovation company with a global perspective. We make the environment central to all of our business activities. Panasonic aims to be the ‘Number One Green Innovation Company’ in the electronics industry by the year 2018, when we celebrate the 100th anniversary of our company’s founding,” he continued.

In a first for Malaysia eco-education activities, Panasonic Malaysia would be collaborating with the Ministry of Education and Panasonic AVC Networks in the PGELP programme as a corporate citizenship activity, slated for helping to raise the environmental awareness of the younger generation; at the same time, promoting Panasonic’s eco brand image through communicating Panasonic eco-activities at the ‘eco ideas’ factory.

“Globally, PGELP was started in August 2010 by Panasonic Headquarters in Japan. It is aimed at elementary and middle school students around the world with a target of two million students by 2018. Today, a total of 212,000 students have taken part. In the Asia Pacific region, the programme was launched in 2010 in Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, India, Vietnam and now in Malaysia,” said Maruo.

“The target is to engage 200,000 students in Asia Pacific by March 2013 and today 19,000 students have taken part,” he added.

Panasonic Malaysia’s ‘eco ideas’ factory was a model factory driven by Panasonic’s ‘eco ideas’ commitment.

“Panasonic AVC Networks ‘eco ideas’ factory will manufacture environmentally friendly LCD TVs. We will increase production efficiency by streamlining the core processes, recycling and installation of the latest manufacturing facilities,” said Panasonic AVC Networks’ managing director Kuniyuki Matsui.

“The Panasonic AVC Networks factory will continue to make a steady improvement to our environmental performance and promote environmental activities among employees and communities. So far, we have developed ‘eco ideas’ factories in Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia and now in Malaysia.

“By March 20123, Panasonic aims to establish one ‘eco ideas’ in each country where we have our manufacturing facilities,” he said.

Panasonic ‘eco ideas’ factory is set to promote factory greening and environment education events for local communities and kids.

“By collaborating with local communities such as governmental institutions and NGOs (non-governmental organisations), Panasonic’s aim is to establish a factory that interacts openly with the general public and conducts business in harmony with local communities,” added Matsui.

Article source: http://www.theborneopost.com/2011/08/18/eco-learning-programme-raises-awareness-among-students/

sustainability

13Mar

Have you seen this man?

National Geographic’s most typical person

National Geographic’s year long series on world population highlights the differences and similarities of the Earth’s population as we reach 7 billion people in 2011.

03Dec

Apple’s Reasons for Denying Charitable Donation Apps?

Filed in Philanthropy | Responsibility | Social | Social media

I’m trying to determine the advantages Apple finds in denying applications which allow individuals to make charitable donations. This fact has been well described by Gizmodo “Why does apple make donation apps so hard?” with a quote from Anu Jayar from Paypal, “I can confirm that we added the donations feature to our iPhone app in version 2.5 in mid August. We removed the feature in version 3.0 of our PayPal Mobile iPhone app. This was done at Apple’s request."

Apple’s policy on the issue is clear, even if the reasoning behind it is not.

21. Charities and contributions

21.1 Apps that include the ability to make donations to recognized charitable organizations must be free

21.2 The collection of donations must be done via a web site in Safari or an SMS

There is wide speculation in the comments to Gizmodo’s article as to why Apple would have such a policy. Liability, unwillingness to reduce 30% commission, more likely the difficulty in determining when to reduce / forego the 30% commission, plans for an Apple payment system, Apple’s historical aversion to corporate philanthropy and others.

Nick Aldridge of MissionFish, the PayPal Mobile App and GetGiving App partner, points out the cost to charities for Apples policy and speculates it may be a combination of factors that is preventing Apple from addressing the issue.

Jack Shapiro, the CEO of PRX, the company behind the popular This American Life iPhone and Public Radio Player apps, is much more critical of Apple’s reasoning and objectives.

The excuse that “Apple doesn’t want to be held responsible for ensuring that the charitable funds make it to the final destination” is a cop-out.

Apple continues to receive the benefit of the doubt when pressed with Responsibility Issues. It will be interesting to see how if the heat gets turned up this time. Author of Beth’s Blog and co-author of The Networked Nonprofit book, Beth Kantor, is telling everyone donation apps is why she’s going to dump her iPhone for an Android unit.

care2 has a petition asking “Apple: Support Our Great Nonprofits” with 319 signatures. The Social Network Airwaves touch on this issue, but certainly it has not taken off. Shapiro’s article is more than 6 months old, and it’s hard to believe they will reach their goal of 5,000 any time soon. This is the target in order to send a letter to Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs, highlighting this issue and asking for Apple to help resolve it.

We will see if others sign-up.

24Nov

Changing Rules – Guardian/Trafigura Example

Filed in Energy | Environment | Management | Responsibility | Social

In our ongoing series on how social media is changing the rules, will look at the 2009 example of Trafigura and the gagging order, I should say super gagging order, placed on the Guardian.

The key lesson to be learned in the Trafigura case study is really an old lesson. You often get more exposure through your actions of trying to keep something from being exposed in the first place. Social Media simply makes it much more likely and far, far more broadly exposed when this happens.

There is another lesson to be learned from this case. It seems to me, Trafigura could have done a much better job, should have done a much better job in cleaning up their act or even preventing it from happening in the first place. I have not researched the details of what transpired and that’s a story for another day.

In October 2009, the Guardian received a super gagging order preventing it from reporting on activities in Parliament. The Guardian reported that it had received the super gagging order preventing it from reporting on specific questions to be asked by MPs which could not be named regarding issues which they could not comment on. The only information that they could share is the case involved the London solicitors Carter-Ruck.

Had the Guardian reported this 5 years earlier, it may have very well been the end of the matter.

However, in 2009 Twitter was available and the following tweet was sent. “Now Guardian prevented from reporting parliament for unreportable reasons. Did John Wilkes live in vain? http://tinyurl.com/yhjxo38”, and the Social Media Floodgates opened.

Carter-Ruck claimed the injunction had been in place for over a month and it was never intended to prevent the paper from reporting activities in Parliament. Nevertheless, the damage was done. With intentions of keeping the issues quiet, the exact opposite happened and was spread virally well beyond the normal distribution of a Guardian story about Trafigura.

For more on this matter, see these articles:

Twitter can’t be gagged: online outcry over Guardian/Trafigura order

How injunctions threaten press freedom

Social media turns toxic avenger for The Guardian (#trafigura)

Breaking (good) News: Ban on Guardian’s Trafigura reporting lifted

Ivorian dumping report published

27Oct

When social responsibility pressure backfires…

Filed in Economy | Environment | Management | Responsibility | Social

The Economist’s Schumpeter columnist calls out some of the unintended consequences of NGOs and government regulations in his piece on “The Case for Business in Developing Economies”, a new book by Ann Bernstein.

Ann Bernstein, the head of a South African think-tank called the Centre for Development and Enterprise, thinks that advocates of corporate social responsibility (CSR) tend to miss this point. In her new book, “The Case for Business in Developing Economies”, she stresses the ways companies benefit society simply by going about their normal business. In a free and competitive market, firms profit by selling goods or services to willing customers. To stay in business, they must offer lower prices or higher quality than their competitors. Those that fail disappear. Those that succeed spread prosperity. Shareholders receive dividends. Employees earn wages.

I have not read it, but for those doing business in the developing world, it seems to bring to light some important problems and issues.

Many of these unintended outcomes are created when the short term needs of a community are overlooked while pursuing the ultimate vision. Just as government officials and NGO leaders can get too focused on that long term vision, corporate leaders must not become too focused on short term gain and lose sight of long term value. Sustainability for the corporate operations often drive decisions which are in lock step with sustainability for customers, suppliers, employees, natural resources and shareholders.

Ms. Bernstein would like to see more and better coverage of the benefits jobs bring to developing countries’ communities. Today companies spend their time and effort where it does the most good, lobbying the rules makers. Changes will come as customers begin choosing products based on more than style and price.

17May

Global Reporting Initiative Certification

I just received my GRI G3 reporting certification from the course I took last week. The course was delivered in Colorado for the first time due to the efforts of CORE with support from Deloitte. Lead, out of Canada, provided the training based on materials from the Global Reporting Initiative.

The instructor was well informed, as were the 26 attendees. Lively discussion, along with some good and some not so good exercises provided us all with a great understanding of the G3 framework and the processes companies should put in place to engage stakeholders, prioritize initiatives, disclose results, share goals and increase sustainability through management processes and transparency.

Global Reporting Initiative
The Sustainability Reporting Framework – of which the Sustainability Reporting Guidelines are the cornerstone – provides guidance for organizations to disclose their sustainability performance. It is applicable to organizations of any size or type, and from any sector or geographic region, and has been used by thousands of organizations worldwide as the basis for their sustainability reporting.

Efficiency, Energy, Environment, GHG, governance, GRI

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