AEV wins Asian CSR award

MANILA, Philippines - Aboitiz Equity Ventures (AEV) landed the top spot for its internal resource optimization campaign at the 2010 Asian CSR Awards held recently in Kuala Lumpur. The annual event, organized by the Asian Institute of Management, recognized Asian companies for their CSR initiatives in five categories: poverty alleviation, support and improvement of education, concern for health, best workplace practices, and environmental excellence.

AEV’s Race to Reduce campaign won in the environmental excellence category. The effort engages all Aboitiz Group business units in a competition on resource consumption. Paper, electricity and water consumption data is gathered monthly and units with the largest reductions are recognized groupwide.

Aside from the actual reductions in consumption, the competition serves as a vehicle for the cross-pollination of resource optimization ideas among some 31,000 employees of the Aboitiz Group. Other CSR programs in Aboitiz are initiated and implemented by the Aboitiz Foundation.

YABhg Datin Paduka Seri Rosmah Mansor, the First Lady of Malaysia, han-ded over elegant Orlina glass trophies to the winning companies. Other awardees were MEASAT Broadcast Systems of Malaysia, UltraTech Cement of India and Kraft Philippines while among the nine other finalists were three Philippine companies: Smart Communications, Pilipinas Shell and IBM Philippines.

The competition received 141 entries representing 99 companies from 15 countries.

The awards were a culmination of a two-day event which brought together the very best CSR practitioners not only from Asia but from other parts of the world to share experiences and best practices in the field. It is considered as the premier CSR event in the region.