The Asia Responsible Enterprise Awards (AREA) 2023 is pleased to honor 78 outstanding business leaders and enterprises for championing sustainable and responsible business practices. Presented by leading regional NGO Enterprise Asia, the AREA is the most reputable award recognition program recognizing organizational efforts in creating a culture of compassion, integrity, and in being socially responsible corporate citizens. The AREA serves as a badge of excellence to spur further innovation and best-practice for sharing about the organization and the world at large.
President Chain Store Corporation (PCSC) was among the recipients who were conferred with the Social Empowerment, Green Leadership, and Health Promotion Awards. Uni-President Enterprises Corporation introduced 7-ELEVEN to Taiwan and was the first to offer 24-hour services with bright, clean stores that can meet customer demands immediately. Its unchanging mission is to provide comprehensive services and create a brand-new high-quality lifestyle.
For its Social Empowerment Award, PCSC has long been committed to community service and noticed a lack of reading resources in rural elementary schools. Since 2011, PCSC has been promoting “Earn Points from Reading and Redeem Breakfast” at 711 Xinjiaxian stores, which has driven the book borrowing rate of 4 local schools to increase by 5 times. Later this project was expanded in 2014 under the name “Reading Encouragement”.
By the end of 2022, PCSC managed to cooperate with 110 schools to jointly promote its reading plan to students. In that same year, PCSC also cooperated with its subsidiary, RSI and Supply Chain CLC to leverage the company’s sustainable papermaking
technology and built 2 paper libraries with 5,000kgs of recycled cartons from PCSC’s store. This has helped reduced 29,000kgs of carbon emissions from Earth and has become a prime example to achieve sustainable education.
For its Green Leadership Award, PCSC intends to focus on responding to Taiwan’s 2050 Net Zero Emissions Path and has created strategies based on “lifestyle transition” and “energy transition” by promoting two major sustainable actions: carbon reduction and plastic reduction. This includes assessing all stores’ energy consumption, promoting a “Near Zero Carbon Building”, advocating for low-carbon diets, and encouraging plastic recycling.
Under the company’s Carbon Reduction Action, the Energy-Use-Intensity (EUI) at the stores in 2022 decreased by 6.46% compared with 2021. In 2022, the energy-saving transition strategy led to the saving of 116.9 million kWh of electricity in overall stores, which is equivalent to reducing 59,524 metric tons of carbon emissions. The project of in-store micro-carbon offsets saves approximately 61,000 kWh of electricity each year.
Whereas, for its Plastic Reduction Action, the “OPEN iECO Recycled Cups Renting Service” has been introduced to 500 stores and reduced the consumption of 5,000 disposable beverage cups (as of February 2023). The Intelligent Automatic Recycling Machines have recycled a total of over 400,000 PET bottles and dry cells by the end of 2022. In that year, the Plastic Reduction Future Stores on outlying islands were able to reduce about 0.7 metric tons of plastic.
For its Health Promotion Award, PCSC’s store brand, 7-ELEVEN, began the “Bring Back the Love Charity Donation Program” which is a multi-function donation platform. Combined with its usual store services, the company has launched many innovative initiatives to help the disadvantaged and the elderly with the goal to promote health, well-being, and community development.
In 2020, the Activities of Daily Living (ADL) and Instrumental Activities of Daily Living scale (IADLs) showed that 90% of the elders that participated in this program showed no significant mental degradation. In 2021, the project achieved 4.61 in its Social Return on Investment (SROI) evaluation, creating a social value of almost NTD10 million in the past four years. This made 7-ELEVEN the first local food retailer to quantify its social influence via SROI.
About Enterprise Asia
Enterprise Asia is a non-governmental organization in pursuit of creating an Asia that is rich in entrepreneurship as an engine toward sustainable and progressive economic and social development within a world of economic equality. Its two pillars of existence are investment in people and responsible entrepreneurship. Enterprise Asia works with governments, NGOs and other organizations to promote competitiveness and entrepreneurial development, in uplifting the economic status of people across Asia and in ensuring a legacy of hope, innovation and courage for the future generation. Please visit https://www.enterpriseasia.org/ for more information.
About Asia Responsible Enterprise Awards (AREA)
The Asia Responsible Enterprise Awards program recognizes and honors Asian businesses for championing sustainable and responsible entrepreneurship in the categories of Green Leadership, Investment in People, Health Promotion, Social Empowerment, Corporate Governance, Circular Economy Leadership, Corporate Sustainability Reporting, and Responsible Business Leadership. For more information, visit: https://enterpriseasia.org/area/.