Second SROI Workshop in China | 2016
Archive Emerging Market Multinationals Network for Sustainability
On May 30th, 2016, the EMM Network and its local partner SynTao Sustainability Solution hold the second workshop on sustainable SROI project evaluation in Beijing, China.
Mr. Phillip Kruschel, Executive Director of the EMM Network, welcomed the initiative’s first round of company and NGO participants. Well-known EMM member companies, including Siemens, Adidas Brasil etc., joined the initial project implementation in Brazil. The results of their participation in this study were presented and discussed with the Chinese CSR managers, who expressed a great interest to include similar SROI indicators in their own performance reporting to enhance their positioning inside their companies.
As co-initiator and supporter of the SROI project in China, Mr. Jilai Peng, Partner of SynTao, outlined some important requirements sustainability initiatives have to meet to be designated eligible to join the SROI analysis in China, e.g. data availability and documentation requirements. All company projects that joined the initiative to-date were briefly introduced and further details, regarding the upcoming project timeline, necessary documentation, etc.
Over the previous months, EMM/SynTao developed a normative evaluation process and together with the CSR managers questionnaires were developed, that serve as starting point for the SROI analysis and intend to lead all company participants step-by-step through the analysis and all calculations involved. To date, more than ten participating EMM member companies finished and returned the questionnaire.
Mr. Baoyu Gao, senior CSR manager of Royal Golden Eagle Group, introduced to all workshop participants the water conservation project of Asia Symbol. After the investment into a new water management system, the company reports 7.82 million RMB less operation costs per day and a decrease of 27,000 tons in daily water consumption. According to SROI calculations, the net present value for a 20-year project period is around 155 million, which is far higher than the project value determined through conventional methods and equal to a project investment return of 228.16%, with a payback period of 6.44 years.
During the Q&A session, lots of questions has been raised such as challenges, case types or data collecting. Based on the Brazilian case studies and the materials we have collected, it is believed that challenges can be solved and the SROI project is very innovative and helpful. In 2016, there will be 2 more SROI workshops held and more SROI cases will be developed during the process. We encourage more enterprises could join the project and use the SROI tool to evaluate their sustainability cases, finally develop a best sustainability practice.
