Be innovative with CSR efforts

NEXT year will be a good start for corporate social responsibility (CSR) in Malaysia. According to the International Trade and Industry Ministry secretary-general Datuk Isham Ishak recently, Bursa Malaysia has made it compulsory for listed companies to report on whatever CSR programmes they initiate – starting from 2019. In 2017, the local bourse had introduced the New Sustainability Framework targeted towards private limited companies (PLCs), and now it’s taking it towards another level.

However, it must be made clear that CSR does not just encompass community projects, as it is much more than that. One of the central themes of CSR concerns the environment. As one may be aware, after the riches of the oil industry were discovered, environment degradation became synonymous with it. Dramatic events like the Exxon Valdez oil disaster in Alaska in 1989 or British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 faux pas come to mind. And closer to home, about six tonnes of diesel and hundreds of litres of engine oil floated from the Penang sea towards Perak when a ship sank, threatening fish and shrimp farms and the coastal environment along several kilometres of northern Perak’s coast in July.

So CSR is not just about reactive measures, but taking cognitive and proactive steps. For instance, it is good that the new Malaysian government is leading the way by charting a zero-waste plan that aims to abolish single-use plastics by 2030. In fact, Malaysia is the first country in South-East Asia to take such bold action to tackle the damaging plastic pollution from countries like the United States and Britain – after China closed its doors on such imports. The United States, along with Britain, Germany, Japan and Mexico, had been among the biggest exporters of scrap plastics to China. Likewise, it is good that the Penang government will be the first state in Malaysia to have 100% Light Emitting Diode (LED) street lighting by 2020. To be sure, already most parts of Kuala Lumpur are under LED illumination.

Government aside, perhaps the pertinent issue about CSR in Malaysia is the relatively low involvement among private and public-listed companies. They must be serious in this undertaking, and not another “greenwashing” initiative – like changing a product’s name or packaging to evoke a more natural aesthetic look, like what was reported about British Petroleum when it changed its name to Beyond Petroleum. Neither is it about collecting awards via mere communi- ty services, as it is the most easily achieved.

CSR is a serious issue and not purely about “increasing profits and shareholder wealth” but ensuring stakeholder interests are also taken care of. The marketplace (consumers) and the environment are two such intertwined areas.

In order to carry this out, CSR should encompass committed initiative, and it could be on private-public partnership. Case in point: the creative partnership in reducing the flow of plastics into oceans by tech giant Dell and the Lonely Whale Foundation (LWF), initiated in 2015. Their project called NextWave aims to intercept plastics in rivers and coastal areas, and recycle these plastics into manufacturing. The key of such programmes is that it brings about economic and social benefits to the stakeholders. The aspiration is to divert 1.4 million kg of plastics over five years, the equivalent of keeping 66 million water bottles from washing out to sea.

Studies have shown that plastics in the ocean degenerate into micro-plastics, and eventually end up in our water system, and traces of plastic can be found in about 84% of tap water and 93% of bottled water tested globally. So such kinds of “serious” projects are what need to be carried out – not just community projects. CSR must form part of a corporate’s DNA.

The establishment of Kind Malaysia recently as a CSR matching platform for public-listed companies (PLCs) is a good start going forward. However, the ideas must be innovative, not mere promotional CSR. For instance, CSR can be made part of the supply chain like how some companies are using packaging made with 25% of recovered ocean-bound plastics while the remaining 75% is made with recycled materials.

In the final analysis, firms may adopt Canon’s four basic strategies to environmental issues: offensive (counter-attack), defensive (seen as victims of social expectations, hence retreat into secrecy or refuse to explore corrective action), indifference (a typical ploy used by SMEs, ignore demands for alternatives until legislation forces a response), and finally innovation (looking for creative ways to capitalise on new demands and opportunities).

Need it be said, which route a firm should take! Dr THANASEELEN RAJASAKRAN Faculty of Creative Industries Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman Kajang, Selangor