UPS and its employees have been busy committing time and money to various social and environmentalcauses in recent weeks.
During the company’s 12th Annual Global Volunteer Month held in October, nearly 400,000employees have been aiming to donate 315,000 volunteer hours to community service efforts, workingwith a wide range of social and environmental organisations. This would be a 5 per cent increasecompared to last year’s monthly hours total.
Voluntary activities this year have included supporting global forestry by planting andprotecting trees, teaching safe driving skills, aiding local communities devastated by disaster andoffering educational and leadership development trainings at local organisations. The company wantsto complete 20 million hours of global volunteerism and community service by the end of 2020, UPSCEO David Abney announced in June.
Earlier this month, the UPS Foundation, the charity arm of the company, announced it hasgiven almost $2.5 million to non-profit organisations especially focusing on environmentalsustainability.
The largest environmental grant recipient is The Nature Conservancy, a leading conservationorganisation that works globally to protect ecologically important lands and bodies of water.Ongoing contributions to the initiative support the programme for reforestation in the U.S.,Brazil, Guatemala, Haiti and China. The Nature Conservancy is directly responsible for planting700,000 trees in at-risk or eroded ecosystems.
UPS said it has surpassed the company’s 2014 tree planting goals, planting more than 1.7million trees this grant cycle under its Global Forestry initiative. The UPS Foundation and UPSemployees have planted more than 3 million trees across 47 countries since the initiative waslaunched in 2012.
Other grant recipients included the World Wildlife Fund, the World Resources Institute, theWorld Business Council for Sustainable Development, the Earth Day Network and the National ParkFoundation.
Operation Smile Philippines, a non-profit organisation that mobilises international medicalprofessionals to perform safe and effective cleft lift and cleft palate reconstructive surgery aswell as related care for children in low and middle income countries, received a $46,500 donationto support its “Gift of Smiles” mission that aims to provide life-changing surgery to 1,000 cleftpatients across six different locations in the Philippines.
In recognition of its corporate responsibility activities, UPS has been ranked highly inseveral sustainability indices. In the Dow Jones Sustainability Wold Index (DJSI World) the companywas positioned in the top 10 per cent among the 2,500 largest companies for the second consecutiveyear. The CDP’s Climate Disclosure Leadership Index (CDLI) ranked UPS among the top ten per cent ofcompanies as well. The annual index showcases companies that have demonstrated a high level oftransparency and data quality in their disclosure of climate-related information.
