Sustainable Development

Ayala is committed to Sustainable Development and strives to embed these practices into its business operations, products, and services. The Ayala group is presently the only conglomerate in the Philippines to publish a set of sustainability reports for all its major companies using the Global Reporting Initiatives (GRI) standard. In 2009, six GRI reports were issued covering Ayala Corporation, Ayala Land, Bank of the Philippine Islands, Globe Telecom, Manila Water, and Cebu Holdings. These reports covered a wide range of triple-bottom-line reporting on the group’s economic, social and community investments, and environmental practices, reflecting the group’s concern for People, Planet, and Profits.


For 2010, the group will issue eight GRI-compliant Sustainability Reports, adding Integrated Micro-Electronics Inc. (IMI) and Ayala Automotive to its list of self-disclosed reports. Ayala will also move up in GRI levels of reporting, covering more performance indicators.

Following the release of Sustainability Reports, the Ayala group will run a series of Sustain+Ability workshops to share best practices among companies and employees in such key areas as energy management, climate change adaptation and business continuity, and environmental practices.

Employee Volunteerism through EngageAyala.
Aside from its work on sustainability reporting, Ayala also engages in various environmental and sustainability efforts through its group-wide employee volunteerism program. While each company within the group engages its employees in volunteer efforts, through EngageAyala, any Ayala employee can sign up to be a volunteer in any of the companies’ programs.

 

Some activities of volunteers at work include:

• The team up of the entire Ayala group with Habitat for Humanity to develop a low-cost housing site in Calauan, Laguna, a resettlement area for the displaced flood victims from along the Pasig River, Marikina and Pasig Cities in Metro Manila. The resettlement site has space for over 1,000 units, with the first 175 built with the help of employee-volunteers. Resources have been raised to build over 450 houses thus far. Adjacent to the resettlement site, Ayala has set aside a 17-hectare company-owned property to build a community center and livelihood area for the community’s residents. This community center will include a church, vocational school, community clinic, transportation terminal, gas station,vegetable gardens, and spaces for light industry and small businesses which will be set up in partnership with other corporations and religious orders.

• Ayala employee volunteers participating in efforts as diverse as tree-planting, Earth Day painting of pedestrian underpass entrances with air-cleaning paint, and Earth Hour (in partnership with the World Wildlife Fund).


•Ayala Land’s promotion of LEED-certified construction of office buildings at NUVALI and environmentally-oriented master planning at its NUVALI and Anvaya developments. Ayala Land has also bolstered its commitment towards developing sustainable communities by mobilizing volunteers in the planting of pine trees in Baguio City in an effort to maintain and cultivate the natural landscape of the City of Pines.

 

• Partnership between Ayala Automotive, through Honda Cars Makati Inc. (HCMI), and ABS-CBN Foundation Inc. - Bantay Kalikasan to support and participate in forest protection efforts. HCMI’s support goes towards the protection of the forest area in the La Mesa Watershed for a period of three years. The effort is geared towards the prevention of soil erosion and flood control, and promotion of La Mesa Watershed as a bio-diversity nature park destination for the general public.

• Globe Telecom’s integrated environmental program called Globe Goes Green, a program designed to integrate key environmental initiatives into Globe’s business strategy. In partnership with Blacksmith Institute, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and the MMO Water Quality Management Board, Globe has organized separate bamboo and mangrove planting activities in Bulacan to help revive the Marilao-Meycauayan-Obando River System. Volunteers from public and private sectors participated in planting 10,500 bamboo and mangrove seedlings in San Jose Del Monte and Obando, Bulacan. Globe also spearheaded an annual environment signature event called the Globe Cordillera Challenge.


• IMI employees have participated in marathons to raise funds for various causes, from the Ayala Run for Home for the benefit of Habitat for Humanity Foundation to its own IMI Fun Run for A Cause inside the IMI plant for the benefit of the IMI Children’s Fund, which raised more than P2 million from 131 runners and pledges and donations from more than 2,700 employees. IMI employees also participated in the 10.10.10 Run for Pasig marathon and the ING marathon to raise resources for Habitat for Humanity.

• BPI’s partnership with World Wide Fund for Nature on a Climate Risk Adaptation project. WWF’s research is focused on generating city-specific socio-economic baseline data for selected cities most likely to be adversely affected by climate change. The four cities covered in the study are Cebu, Davao, Baguio and Iloilo. Results of the study will be shared with the sectors at risk in each of the cities selected so they can better prepare for climate change disasters. The data from the study will also give the cities a more comprehensive basis for the policies and actions they will craft to mitigate the effects of and to adapt to climate change.