Shandong Lingong Construction Machinery (SDLG) has signed a global CSR partnership agreement with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in conjunction with the launch of its 2016 Top Driver campaign in Yunfu in Guangdong province, China.
The Top Driver programme is a contest run each year by SDLG to promote the safer and more efficient operation of its machines through training and assessment while searching across China to find the country’s number one machine operator.
Each year, the event incorporates a charity drive called ‘Top Drivers Environmental Volunteer Action’, and this year SDLG has involved the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in the campaign.
In June, SDLG already co-organised a seminar on green practices with the WWF that saw hundreds of volunteers from the Top Driver campaign took part in a tree-planting event as part of the mine environmental management plan in Yunfu.
“The Top Driver program has enjoyed huge success and SDLG is now shifting the focus of the campaign and transforming it into an annual environmental charity event,” said Wen Degang, general manager of SDLG.
“As a global partner of the WWF, SDLG will raise environmental awareness among its customers and machine operators. We will spread the word about environmental causes through the Top Driver campaign.”
In a survey of Top Driver participants, 85% of respondents said they hoped to take on more charitable work in future and praised the programme for helping them boost their skill levels.
SDLG’s cooperation with the WWF dates back to 2012 when the company pledged to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 1.65 million tonnes in three years through improving production facilities – a commitment that it honoured.
In the next five years, SDLG will also be investing more than $50m in a ‘smart manufacturing’ project in partnership with the School of Software of Tsinghua University.