Green Behavior and Corporate Social Responsibility in Asia

Farzana Quoquab, Jihad Mohammad, Farzana Quoquab Habib, Jihad Mohammad Dhahi Al-Nusairat

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781787566859
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Organisational Development
• Index: Business

In recent years, the issues of sustainability, green behavior and corporate social responsibility have become a growing global concern. This increased concern for environmental welfare has started to affect the way marketers, managers and policy makers think and organize their businesses. In Western culture, there has been widespread discussion on green related issues; however, different cultures are at an earlier stage in embracing this global change.
Green Behavior and Corporate Social Responsibility in Asia seeks to apply this discussion to Asian culture, using case studies that reflect the reaction, response, managerial problems and success of seven Asian countries–India, Malaysia, Turkey, Brunei, Iran, Pakistan and Sri Lanka–in adopting green concepts. These concepts include: green organizations; eco-tourism; food loss and waste; recycling-reuse; waste management practice; green space; the plastic-bag free campaign; care for animals; and, corporate social responsibility.
The cases outlined in this book illustrate how numerous companies and organizations operating in Asian countries incorporate green marketing and green management related concepts and issues into their strategy. It will appeal to researchers and practitioners, working in the fields of consumer behavior, human resource management, organizational behavior and sustainability.

SECTION 1
GREEN BEHAVIOR

Chapter 1

Stakeholder Expectations Toward Green Environment: “Malaysia Go Green” through MYSaveFood Initiative

Ainu Husna M. S. Suhaimi, Aniadila Kamaruddin, Nik Rozana Nik Mohd Masdek and Rozhan Abu Dardak

Structured Abstract

Subject Area

Marketing Management, Consumer Behavior.

Study Level

This case is suitable to be used in advanced undergraduate and MBA/MSc level.

Case Overview

This case illustrates the challenges related to creating awareness toward green environment in Malaysia. It revolves around the issues pertaining food losses and waste along the supply chain from farms to table. Food losses and waste are of the important manifestations of the inefficiencies that plague our food systems. Statistics by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported that around 1.3 billion tons of food is lost and wasted every year in the world. In Malaysia, the estimated food loss is around 400,000 tons in 2015 and is increasing every year. The amount of food loss could feed around 370,000 people in a year. It is recognized that household and individual behaviors have a great impact on the environment. The individual and household behavior contributed to ecological imbalance. Personal consumption and behavior create large-scale problems such as climate change, pollution, biodiversity loss, and natural resources depletion. Green behavior relates to activities that minimizes harm to the environment. These include minimizing energy use, utilizing efficient technologies, and reducing food waste and food loss. There is increasing policy interest on managing green behavior to ensure sustainable living and environment in Malaysia. Ministry of Agriculture and Agro-based Industry (MOA) aims to embark a Green Initiative that focuses on the management of food loss and food waste. The Minister has directed The Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (MARDI) to lead the project. The Director General of MARDI requested Dr Ain Hanim, the director of Corporate Communication Centre to come out with a proposal. This proposal will be discussed at the management meeting at the middle of March, so that the Director General could present it at the Ministry’s management meeting. Taking account the whole picture, Dr Ain Hanim is now contemplating whether to propose a strategic planning that focuses on either (1) to run nationwide awareness campaign on food loss and waste (FLW), (2) to conduct impactful studies on current Malaysian Save Food (MYSaveFood) awareness campaign, or (3) to implement new policies on reducing FLW, food rescue, and food safety. Different strategy requires different amount of budget and also creates different level of impacts. She is in dilemma on which options should be the best for Malaysia.

Expected Learning Outcomes

The objective of this case is as follows:

• to introduce students about the MySaveFood awareness programs in order to develop their understanding about the need for saving foods;
• to expose students to the green concepts such as food loss and food waste; and
• to train students on identifying factors and strategies that can lead to find a solution in regard to implement green activities.

Keywords: Food loss; food waste; reduction; awareness program; environment; green initiative; save food; sustainability; waste reduction; public private partnership; network

Introduction

The issue of food loss and waste (FLW) is a global phenomenon. Statistics by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported that around 1.3 billion tons of foods is lost and wasted every year in the world. It has been identified that the causes of food loss is mainly due to the lack of necessary infrastructure, technologies, or standard operating procedure (SOP). However, the causes of food waste are mostly related to the human behavior. It is recognized that individual and household behavior contributes to ecological imbalance. Irresponsible personal consumption and behavior can be wasteful and will create large-scale problems such as climate change, pollution, biodiversity loss, and natural resources depletion. Green behaviors are related to activities which minimize harm to the environment. This includes minimizing energy use, increasing sustainable practices, and reducing FLW.

In Malaysia, the estimated food loss was around 400,000 tons in 2015 which had been increasing every year. The amount of food loss could feed around 370,000 people in a year. The recorded organic waste reaching the landfill in Malaysia is 15,000 tons daily of which 3,000 tons is actually still edible. There is increasing policy interest on managing green behavior as to ensure sustainable environment in Malaysia. Ministry of Agriculture and Agro-based Industry (MOA) aims to embark on a Green Initiative that focuses on the management of food loss and food waste. The Minster has directed The Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (MARDI) to lead the project.

The Director General of MARDI requested the Director of Corporate Strategic Centre (CSC) to come up with a proposal. This proposal would be discussed at the management meeting at the middle of March, so that The Director General could present it at the MOA management meeting. By considering the whole scenario, the Director of CSC is now contemplating whether to propose a strategic planning that focus on either (1) nationwide awareness campaign on FLW, (2) impact studies on current MY Save Food awareness campaign, and (3) new policies on reducing FLW, food rescue, and food safety. Different strategy requires different amount of budget and also create different level of impacts. She is in dilemma to understand which options would be the best for Malaysia.

Food Loss and Food Waste

The Global Scenario

The global food systems have changed drastically in the last century. Production of food has transformed from just for feeding the community and own nations, to business activities that create income for the country. Food is now produced at a large scale, utilizing modern technologies and infrastructure. This has caused food production to exponentially increase over the years as a result of population growth.

In general, the world produces more food required by the population. Although the amount is enough to feed the world, ironically, this does not happen. Poverty malnutrition is still at large across the globe. Out of the seven billion global populations, 1/9 still does not have enough food and 66 million kids around the world still go to school hungry. This scenario is perplexing and is caused by numerous reasons. One of which is that a large amount of food produced does not actually reach the consumers and gets thrown away and is termed as FLW. From the farm to table, one-third of all food produced globally ends up in the waste dump, which is equivalent to 1.3 billion tons, amounted around RM4.4 trillion every year. So much sweat, energy, and resources are wasted. Not only this but also food thrown away has detrimental effects to food security, environment, and economy.

FLW indicates the waste of resources – land, labor, water, energy – and efforts put into food production with negative impacts on food security. FLW also ranks as the third largest emitter of greenhouse gas (GHG) globally. Food loss is defined as decrease in quantity or quality of food that occur before retail. Food loss takes place largely along the supply chains that feed the mass markets and results largely from the lack of market orientation, poor infrastructure, weak integration of supply chains, poor farm management, and a limited knowledge base. Food waste is defined as the removal of food which is still fit for human consumption by choice or has been left to spoil or expire. Food waste takes place in food retail, and post wholesale market, food service sector, and at home.

There are many reasons for the occurrence of FLW. At the farm, it can be caused by pest and diseases or by inefficient harvesting techniques. Packaging techniques and bad transportation procedures also contribute to food loss. Another contributing factor is lack of communication on supply and demand across the supply chain phases contributing to over production of food. Grading or so-called cosmetic standards is another reason where not look good fruits are thrown away.

There was a difference though where FLW occurred. Food loss was more common in under or developing countries where lack of technologies, SOP in postharvest handling, and lack of proper infrastructure were the main reasons that contributed to food loss. The more developed countries have more efficient food systems; hence, there was more food waste. Reduction in FLW is necessary as it has detrimental effects. As the organic material in FLW degraded, it emitted greenhouse gasses. Food wastage’s carbon footprint is estimated at 3.3 billion tons of CO₂ equivalent of greenhouse gasses released into the atmosphere per year (Food and Agriculture Organization, 2018). The greenhouse gasses were equivalent to the third largest country after China and the USA, in 2012. The average carbon footprint of food wastage was about 500 kg of carbon dioxide (CO₂) equivalents per person per year, in the same year. Europe, North America, Oceania, and industrial Asia have the highest per capita carbon footprint of food wastage (approximately 700–900 kg of CO₂ equivalents per person per year), while sub-Saharan Africa has the smallest footprint per person (about 180 kg of CO₂ equivalents).

Obviously, this has great impact on the climate change that was already having detrimental impact on agriculture. The changes in trends of temperature cause new pests and diseases as well as disturb the growing and fruiting patterns of agriculture products. This is perhaps more subtle but equally damaging to extreme weather hazards such as flood, drought, earthquakes or tsunami.

Recognizing the urgent need to promote awareness of the magnitude of FLW and the impacts on food security and hunger, FAO of the United Nation launched the Save Food Asia-Pacific Campaign, a regional campaign in August 2013. This Regional Campaign sought to eliminate FLW based on the Save Food Campaign which was introduced by Messe Dusseldorf Group on January 27, 2011, in Berlin, Germany, in cooperation with FAO.

The Malaysian Scenario

The amount of FLW across the Malaysian food supply chain is not fully known. The only crop where postharvest losses (PHL) has been thoroughly studied is rice. Rice PHL has been stages studied during harvesting, transportation, storage, and milling. From these studies, a SOP was developed and properly followed can significantly reduce rice PHL. Rice PHL has reduced from 28.5% in 1985 to 7.89% in 2016 (Azman et al., 2017). The world trend indicated that, in general, agriculture loss for almost all agriculture produce is between 20% and 30% every year. And around 30–50% of fruits and vegetables produced do not reach the consumers and are lost along the value chain.

For food waste, the number that really caught everyone’s attention was the colossal amount of food that Malaysians waste daily which is around15,000 tons. This is as much as eight football fields. Recent findings also show that around 3,000 tons of edible food has been dumped in landfills every day in Malaysia (SWCorp, 2015).To put it in context, 3,000 tons of food can feed at least 2.2 million people with three meals a day. SWCorp also highlighted that 44.5% wastes in the landfills were food waste, in 2015.

Government Initiatives to Reduce FLW

The Malaysian government recognized the importance of managing FLW along the value chain of agricultural produce. The government also recognized that these issues involved many ministries. The MOA would like to champion this issue and plan to introduce save food initiatives to promote a comprehensive and effective strategies to reduce FLW in Malaysia. The Minister said, “Effort must be taken to ensure this problem will not affect the environment.” The Ministry aims to introduce policy that can support and encourage green behavior through the save food initiatives. However, the Minister recognized that the level of policy intervention is a complex process since behavior is influenced by many factors. It is a responsibility of all community members, government agencies, NGOs and household. It is a long process that involves awareness programs, scheduled activities, and structured strategies. For example, the programs and activities include the following:

• regulatory – governing tools for controlling behavior such as laws and procedures;
• economic base – economic instruments that can influence the purchasing behavior such as taxes, discounted prices, and subsidies;
• informative – facts about the products and the impact of consuming the products. It can be in the form of product labeling, brochures, and others; and
• behavioral – social tools such as culture, religion, and system. This includes products associated with religion such as Halal for Muslim and beef for Hindus.

Malaysian Save Food (MYSaveFood) Network

Based on the awareness on FLW, MOA, represented by MARDI, decided to jump on the bandwagon and established the Malaysia Save Food (MySaveFood) Initiative on October 15, 2015. MARDI signed an agreement with FAO to develop a national Save Food Network which is referred to as MYSaveFood. This initiative is aimed to establish a network and, together, create awareness on FLW in Malaysia. It was launched by Datuk Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia, and Dr Jose Graziano Da Silva, FAO Director General, on March 8, 2016. The event had triggered a general awareness on FLW in Malaysia.

The initial roles of the Nationa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Section 1: Green Behavior
• Section 2: Corporate Social Responsibility and Philanthropy
• Index