Danone Aqua has helped reforest a national park, planted trees, distributed seedlings, provided access to clean water, mapped land and water irrigation as well as provided training for farmers and their work management to improve community members’ lives.
Danone Aqua’s sustainable development director, Yann Brault, said that last year Aqua received two prestigious awards for environment preservation. The first award was the Wana Lestari (Preserved Forest) Award from the Forestry Ministry for the reforestation of Mount Klabat forest, North Minahasa in North Sulawesi. The second award was a Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) award from the United Nations and Metro TV in the category of environmental preservation for Water Access, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH).
WASH, which focuses on access to clean water and hygiene, is part of the company’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) program within Aqua Lestari launched by Danone Aqua in 2006. Aqua Lestari is an innovative social and environmental approach of various parties to preserve the environment, especially water sources, and to empower the concerned communities.
Other programs of the company related to environmental preservation include protecting water sources through reforestation, such as the planting of hundreds of thousands of trees on Mount Merapi and in Mount Salak National Park, agro organic forests as well as providing seedlings, assistance in integrated farming, irrigation, providing education and training to farmers and communities and other activities such as the prevention of floods, free medical aid and free circumcisions. All these programs are designed to cater to the communities’ needs and are based on the company’s guide of ISO 26000 on the company’s social responsibility.
One should give the thumbs up for such activities and hope that other companies follow suite, because protecting water resources is the responsibility of all. The scarcity of clean water is a huge challenge not only to be handled by packaged water companies, but by each and every one of us. (Burhan Abe)
The Jakarta Post, March 22, 2010
