Boysen Paints win Sustainable Company of the Year

Pacific Paint (Boysen) Philippines, Inc. was awarded Sustainable Company of the Year at the Global Responsible Business Leadership Awards 2018 ceremonies at the Sunway Convention Center in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia last April 26, 2018. The awards, which represents the most prestigious form of recognition for companies globally on leadership in Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Sustainability, is organized by the Asia Pacific CSR Council and the Institute of Sustainability and builds on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Its criteria are well-aligned to the Ten Principles of the United Nations Global Compact, covering the areas of Environment, Human Rights, Labor Standards and Anti-Corruption, while also recognizing companies that achieve triple bottom line success.

Aside from Boysen® Paints, Pacita Juan of Echostore, who was named CEO of the Year, was the other Filipino awardee. Other awardees included companies from Bangladesh, China, Germany, India, Japan, Scotland, Singapore, Vietnam, and Malaysia.

“It’s a tremendous honor for a Filipino company to be named Sustainability Company of the Year,” says Johnson Ongking, Vice President of Boysen Paints. “We are trying our best to make Boysen as green as we can, from following the best environmental practices in our operations to making products that help enable Filipinos to play a positive role in becoming solutions to our environmental problems.”

While most of the world thinks of eco-friendly paint as having minimal impact on the environment, Boysen Paints has gone one step further and created innovative paint products that help make the environment better. Boysen developed unique technologies like KNOxOUTTM that transformed walls to air purifiers to reduce air pollution and Cool ShadesTM that converted roofs into solar reflectors to reflect more heat into outer space and prevent it from being trapped by greenhouse gases.

“KNOxOUT and Cool Shades are empowering technologies – they give everyone new ways to address some of our most serious environmental concerns like air pollution and climate change.” adds Ongking. “All of us are contributors to these problems when we use motor vehicles or consume electricity, but now we can also be part of the solution by using the right paint in a smart way.”

The realization of this concept is most vividly seen with Project EDSA, where Boysen Paints created large air purifying artworks along Metro Manila’s busiest and most polluted roadway, and won top prize at the Cannes “ACT Responsible Tributes” (Planet category) in 2014. The company, which recently installed solar panels to switch their energy usage to renewable sources, has also teamed up with the Climate Change Commission in the past to encourage Filipinos to paint their roofs with white or light colors to reduce their carbon footprint and help mitigate climate change.

“Just as we wear white clothing to keep cool, white roofs keep homes cooler,” says Ongking. “That means less energy use for airconditioning, which translates to more savings and a lower carbon footprint. For the planet, it also means a higher albedo, which means more solar energy is reflected back into space rather than being trapped by greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. That’s why converting your roof to a rooflector is one of the easiest and most practical ways to help mitigate climate change.”

Pacific Paint, which last year was ranked the 51st largest paint company in the world and 17th largest in Asia, was also one of the first companies to have its brands – Boysen, Virtuoso, Nation, and Titan – receive Lead Safe® Paint mark under an international certification program. Boysen Paints is one of only 2 paint brands in Asia Pacific to win the Reader’s Digest Trusted Brand Platinum Status every year since the inception of the award for paint in 2006.

Boysen, a strong supporter of the Philippine Eagle Foundation, is also the first and only Filipino paint company to be Responsible Care® accredited. Responsible Care® is the chemical industry’s global voluntary initiative under which companies work to continuously improve their health, safety and environmental performance. It was also the first local paint company to have its manufacturing plant ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001 certified, signifying that its environmental, health and safety management systems comply with the highest international standards.

Its main manufacturing facility, which was the first zero wastewater paint facility in the country, also won the Inspirational SME Award 2013 for the category Planet in 2013 from the CBI, an agency of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, and was one of 15 companies in the country to be awarded the DENR Seal of Approval under Track 1 Category of the Philippine Environment Partnership Program. It has also been a Master Awardee of the Zero Basura Olympics of the DENR and was recently named Regional Winner in the 2017 DOLE Productivity Olympics and Mother Nature Awardee of the Pollution Control Association of the Philippines, Inc. (PCAPI).

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