Top Glove volunteers collaborated with Trash Hero Banting to clean up Pantai Morib and Pantai Kelanang in Selangor, segregating collected rubbish into recyclables and non-recyclables.

 

IN tandem with growing environmental awareness and understanding the need for establishing sustainable business practices towards the preservation of the world around us for the greater good, the best companies in the world today understand that adopting a green business model – which prioritises minimising environmental impact instead of maximising profit – paves the way for sustainable long term growth.

Today, global companies, such as Top Glove, are going a step further by taking the responsibility of greening the communities they operate in.

Conscious of its corporate social responsibilities, the company established the Top Glove Foundation (TGF) on June 14,2009 with the objective of providing funds for charity and education, as well as to carry out activities related to environment and community.

The foundation organises various initiatives and channels the company’s community outreach under three pillars: Community, Education and Environment. Last year, TGF has invested RM30mil to support various causes under these pillars.

“At Top Glove, as we go about our daily lives – at work, home and within the community – our mission ‘Ensuring Safe Human Protection Globally’inspires us to consistently contribute to the community we belong to in tangible and appreciable ways, ” said Top Glove managing director Datuk Lee Kim Meow.

 “This means taking active steps to minimise our carbon footprint and reducing waste.

“We strongly believe that managing our business by improving our communities from the inside allows us to make things better for ourselves and for the people we meet and rely upon in our daily value chain, as we do well by doing good for the environment, our business, our workforce, and the communities we serve.

“Top Glove Foundation leads our CSR initiatives both internally and externally, and is the driving force behind many of Top Glove’s efforts towards becoming a more environment-friendly organisation, for our own people as well the communities we operate in.”

Internal efforts

One of the initiatives TGF undertook was organising its annual Recycling Day to encourage upcycling, downcycling and recycling among employees, and at the same time instil a green mind set.

In August 2020, employees from various divisions, offices and factories worked tirelessly to collect a total of 1,782kg of recyclable waste.

A week later, the foundation also organised the collection and dismantling of old bicycles from the new male hostels to send the parts to recycling centres. This activity was undertaken to clean up the male hostels’ surroundings while reducing waste going into landfills.

Additionally, Top Glove is adopting a paperless direction, moving towards automation and digitalisation, and has been educating its employees and instilling good habits to reduce paper usage through regular spot checks.

Community engagement

While the foundation had to reduce physical activities last year, Top Glove volunteers still clock over 2,500 volunteer hours towards environmental activities for the surrounding communities.

In support of the Setia Alam community, TGF initiated the Save the Forest, Save Us initiative in September 2019 aimed at preserving the Setia Alam Community Forest; the initiative ran 10 programmes until Aug 29,2020.

The foundation organised hikes to remove rubbish along hiking trails and the surrounding areas, carried out maintenance works of shelters, erected signages for visitors and constructed park benches.

Top Glove volunteers also collaborated with Trash Hero Banting to clean up Pantai Morib and Pantai Kelanang in Selangor over four sessions in August 2020. The rubbish collected was then segregated into recyclable and non recyclable waste before disposal.

Continued commitment to green practices

“When it comes to protecting the environment, we all have a responsibility to do what we can, for the sake of our future generations.

“While we work to continually improve on environmental practices within our business operations, through Top Glove Foundation we also endeavour to ensure a clean and green environment for the benefit of the communities we work in as well,” said Lee.