by Pei-Wen Wang

In recent years, CSR and ESG have become more common among enterprises and listed companies. CSR stands for “Corporate Social Responsibility,” referring to enterprises pursuing not only profits, but more responsibilities in stakeholders that include supply chains, labor, employees, and even the environment and the economy in general.

ESG, on the other hands, stand for “Environment, Society, and Governance.” It refers to practical actions that companies take to fulfill their social responsibilities.

PC manufacturer Acer spends 9 years making the most eco-friendly packaging materials

It took nine years for Acer to come up with the most ideal packaging material, which is 100% recyclable and it does not require manure operation for packaging. This design won the Red Dot Award in 2021 under the theme of Packaging Design.

Acer’s product packaging team for their notebooks took into account the durability in drop tests and the amount of pallets used during their R&D process. The earliest design was an all-paper structure, which featured pieces of paper folded onto one another to wrap the product airtight, while retaining certain shock buffer space. This design, by far, is the most common eco-friendly packaging method. Although paper can be recycled, it required a lot of manpower and paper.

Starting in 2013, the team worked on using paper-plastic as the inner lining, and the team went directly to the manufacturer to build an entirely new mold, where they molded the pulp into a variety of products as containers and covers. At the beginning, the pulp was molded into pieces of paper-plastic cushions, and it finally became a one-piece structure. In this way, labor costs for folding manually were great reduced. The proportion of paper-plastic materials involving recycled materials used to account be 75% in the early days, and it is now 100%. There is no need to consume new paper, and the container itself can buffer external shock with its structure integrity. With modification made along the test results over time, there have been 80% to 90% of products that are made entirely with paper-plastic.

Tabeloop matches stores for food purchase to reduce waste

Tabeloop is Japan’s first B2B food sharing platform with the goal of reducing food waste. On the platform, sellers can sell high-quality ingredients in a large amount that are about to go to waste. Part of the sales revenue will be donated to institutions or organizations working to end hunger. In 2018, Tabeloop signed a cooperation agreement with Gate, a company that runs fisheries and restaurants, to purchase a large number of unsellable catches in Mie Prefecture. The ingredients can be processed by local businesses and transported to beer houses and pubs in Tokyo through Tabeloop’s logistics services.

Conclusion

Many enterprises, businesses, and listed companies have also taken the initiative in contributing to sustainable development, and it is hoped that through such actions, waste can be reduced and more people can benefit from the food shared.