Flying the Flag in Phua Chu Kang boots

We did it!  After months of delay due to bad weather, a bus load of MAS employees went to plant tree saplings in Pekan, Pahang, as part of our Voluntary Carbon Offset Scheme (VCOS).  Passengers flying MAS have the option of offsetting their portion of carbon dioxide emitted during their flight, thus helping to reduce global warming.  MAS staff on duty travel have their emissions automatically offset.  We joined many hundreds of people from the local community and school, government agencies involved including Forestry, FRIM, MNRE and local government, and our corporate donors Khazanah and Maxis.

We are the first! This is the first such carbon offset scheme in Malaysia involving a partnership between private and public sectors.  On top of that, we were also the first airline in ASEAN to launch a voluntary carbon offset scheme back in 2008.

Unlike the previous few days, the skies remained clear and we enjoyed the carnival-like atmosphere as educational booths had been set up by government agencies and local universities.  There was ample food and drinks, and lucky draw prizes awaited those lucky enough to find a red envelope waiting for them at their designated planting plot!  A live band was also present, belting out tunes and adding to the jovial atmosphere.

Our tree planting forms part of the rehabilitation and conservation of the South-East Pahang Peat Swamp Forest (SEPPSF), internationally known for being the largest contiguous peat swamp forest in the world.  When we plant trees, we are not only offsetting the carbon dioxide emitted by air travel, but are also helping in the conservation of hundreds of species of plants and animals, some found only in this area.  This tree planting marks the culmination of 2 years hard effort by MAS and various government agencies.  We have collected RM180,000 so far, and future carbon offset efforts will continue to tap into this fund.

Mucking about for a good cause

You can make a difference! When you travel next on MAS, do consider a donation to the VCOS fund – our online calculator makes it easy to calculate the cost of offsetting your carbon emissions, and you have the option of fully offsetting, or donating any amount that you wish.  A return trip from Kuala Lumpur to Melbourne only costs RM38.40 to fully offset!

http://site.malaysiaairlines.com/campaigns/calculate.aspx

FAQs at http://site.malaysiaairlines.com/campaigns

Sustainability at MAS. MAS has many initiatives that enable us to reduce our carbon emissions and footprint.  Our new 737-800s and A380s, for example, burn less fuel than the aircraft that they are or will be replacing.  Our meal containers served in-flight are made from sugar cane fibre, reducing our reliance on plastic and paper products.  Other initiatives are in the pipe-line and will be announced once they take off.  We also take a holistic view of Sustainability, looking at all three aspects of business, community and environment in any particular project.  Through our tree-planting, we are contributing to the conservation of the environment by adding a Voluntary Carbon Offset element to how we do business.  Not forgetting the local community, we have used the proceeds raised during Townhall to buy 2 netbooks and a printer, items requested by Sekolah Kebangsaan Runchang, the local Orang Asli school.  Our staff also conducted a learning session during the launch, teaching the orang asli children about global warming and how planting trees can help reduce it.

Edutainment session on global warming & tree planting

At MAS, we care.

Local orang asli kids joining in the fun

Environment was given floor space at the exhibit hall and we decided to try something different.  Promoting our voluntary carbon offset program to MAS employees was a bomoh, selling empty bottles of… you guessed it… CO2.  He was hard at work selling, as he puts it, “…strong fever medicine for earth, who is very sick…”

Bomoh at work sequestering carbon

As with all airlines that serve the European markets, we had started our EU ETS monitoring and reporting activities for the whole of this calendar year. As I type this we are finalising the legal and commercial arrangements with a vendor on the verification process- a process / exercise that is mandatory for the EU ETS compliance.

Disappointingly, our Green Office program has not been running as smoothly as we had hoped. There were stop-start activities- some folks have seriously taken this on board, but most have been busy with the airline’s main focus, sidelining this “secondary activity” to pursue company objectives. We did have one building-wide “spring clean” exercise in our own office, where at least on a local level we are now aware of how much paper products we use and dispose. We are looking at having this as a recurrent activity, as well as for other buildings to do the same.

Our Voluntary Carbon Offset program has gained another corporate client- Khazanah Nasional Berhad, who joined our program with a donation. Thank you ladies for supporting our initiative

And on this note, we will be having a tree-planting event in January 2011 together with FRIM and the Pahang State Government, to assist in their redevelopment of the Pekan peat swamps.

On November 11th we jointly conducted the Airport and airline on sustainability seminar, where we shared similar and different challenges and approaches in dealing with climate change in the industry, and where we also learned about our guest speaker’s Deep Green program. I would very much like to see this become a series of events, with Malaysia Airports again, on similar topics, but with expanded scope and depth. Aviation and climate change is an interesting combination of topics internationally, even more so for the locals perspective.

Moving forward we will be further pursuing the sustainability agenda for the airline. A lot of 2010 was spent creating the awareness and educating the internal folks and management about this topic and how the airline would benefit with green initiatives. We have been engaging the higher management with this topic, both from a CSR as well as a brand-positioning perspective. 2011 will be the year when this becomes an internal policy, where we will also be pushing for more employee engagement activities to support this slow but steady cultural change.

On that note Malaysia Airlines will also therefore start to formally report on its sustainability efforts. This will include formalising this as a policy, increase internal adoption at the corporate level, conduct activities where we will measure and set targets for our (reduced) carbon footprint, increase our Green Office and 3R programs to include onboard activities, social responsibility activities, and have fun at the same time

This is a “real-time” tracking of global flights over a period of a few days.

Enjoy!

What are your observations in terms of frequencies, schedules, concentrations of flights?

During one of the presentations by a Ministry official he noted, amongst other things, that our FAQ section of our VCOS page needs some improvement.

I will openly admit that, along with the aforementioned “other things”, a lot of our online VCOS features require improvements. Chief among these are the actual origin-and-destination pairings of the airline, and the actual carbon calculator.

I am happy to share that we will be revamping these latter features of the program. It’s still early days but suffice to say we are moving from the “pro-bono”-developed carbon calculator to something more serious, and well, paid for.

We will come to that when the time is right. For now, I am asking you, Mr/Mdm Layperson, what you would like to see written or addressed, should a new FAQ on our voluntary carbon offset scheme be re-developed.

I would greatly appreciate any and all feedback on this and your contribution to the list of questions/queries that you want to see answered, by leaving them in the comments section below.

Thank you in advance!