Corporate Social Responsibility

• The Environment
• Global warming and energy conservation
• Air pollution and noise reduction
• Water conservation and liquid waste
• Solid waste and materials efficiency

Swire SITA's highway and off-road fleet, as well as the heavy equipment operating at its landfills, run on ultra-low sulphur diesel, as do the ramp vehicles operated by Cathay Pacific Catering Services at Hong Kong International Airport. The company has also converted the steam boilers in its flight kitchen from 0.5% sulphur diesel to 0.005% ultra low sulphur diesel, reducing sulphur emissions from 10.67 tonnes to 0.11 tonnes per year.

In Australia, Swire's specialist road transport subsidiary, Kalari Transport, operates a modern, aerodynamically designed, fuel-efficient road fleet, with an average age of just three years. The company has introduced a system of 'smart specification' which assigns particular vehicles to single, long-term contracts for their working life. This means trucks can be appropriately matched to road conditions; those assigned to routes that stick mainly to the tarmac are of relatively lighter specification than those required to travel off the highway, and the reduction in weight significantly increases their payload capacity over the course of a year, thereby reducing the number of truck movements, the amount of fuel consumed, and the level of exhaust emissions.

Also in Australia, scrap-processing joint venture, MultiServ NSW Pty, has developed a unique fume extraction system for the BHP steelworks at Port Kembla, which captures up to 90% of particulate fallout from its Flat Iron Processing facility - preventing up to 12 tonnes of matter per hour escaping into the atmosphere.

Several Swire companies became signatories to the Hong Kong Clean Air Charter. In the same year, Cathay Pacific completed installation of Flight Management Systems on its fleet, ensuring accurate track-keeping on preferred airport approach routes, thereby reducing the noise impact of aircraft operations on the local community. The airline continues to liaise with the Hong Kong CAD on noise reduction.

Swire Properties requires its contractors to submit an Environmental Management Plan that addresses air pollution and related issues, such as reducing the impact of noise, dust, water pollution and waste from its construction and demolition sites. Initiatives include overhead nozzles at site entrances for dust suppression and truck wheel-wash. Mitigating noise produced by construction and demolition in Hong Kong's densely populated urban environment is a major issue for Swire Properties. At its recent Castle Steps development, where neighbouring residential buildings were less than 10 metres from the site, noise barriers and non-percussive demolition methods, such as hydraulic crushers, were used. Wastewater collected from these and other on-site activities is treated and recycled.