Why Spend On Sustainability?
Business is Bad. Why Spend On Sustainability Solutions?
The power distributor hopes to provide its community a safer and healthier working environment through good air quality.
By Coni Tejada
Published March 12, 2021
With the current pandemic caused by a virus targeting the respiratory system, it is not surprising that people all over are concerned about the air they breathe. On this issue, Meralco—the country’s largest electric distribution utility—is ahead of the curve.
Weeks before the entire island of Luzon went on lockdown in March 2020, Meralco had just completed the initial phase of its air quality monitoring project. With the help of its subsidiary MServ, it installed sensors at the Lopez Building’s lobby and right outside its doors near the flagpole. These sensors read information ranging from temperature and humidity to amounts of particulate matter and chemicals in the air. Real time figures are flashed on a large TV screen at the Lopez Building lobby for employees and guests to see.
Power, planet, people, and prosperity. Meralco's #PoweringTheGoodLife initiative aims to reduce carbon emissions for a healthier and safer working environment.
This particular project is in line with Meralco’s #PoweringTheGoodLife (PGL) sustainability initiatives that aim at monitoring and reducing carbon emissions that were set in 2019 by President and CEO Atty. Ray C. Espinosa. By moving towards this direction, the power distributor hopes to provide its community a safer and healthier working environment through good air quality.
But clean air and a healthy working environment are just a couple of issues addressed out of the four areas that the PGL sustainable agenda aim to focus on—power, planet, people, and prosperity.
With the pandemic pressing down on all four, economies plunging into deep contraction while global death tolls continue to rise and global warming on track to irreversible despite the lockdowns, sustainability has never been more vital.
A recent study by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Medicine said that there’s a relation between prolonged exposure to air pollution and worsening effects of COVID-19. The research team led by Xiao Wu, Rachel Nethery, and Francesca Dominici has found that there is “an 11% increase in mortality from COVID-19 infection for every 1 microgram/cubic meter increase in air pollution.”
In an interview with American health-oriented news site STAT News, Dominici recommended immediate action for places suffering from bad air quality. “The results of our study suggest that in counties with high levels of pollution is where we need to implement social distancing measures now more than ever, knowing that people here will be more susceptible to die from COVID-19.”
This suggests that the pandemic and its detrimental effects on our way of life would not be ended through inoculation alone but also by a global effort to change course towards sustainability.
Staying on course towards sustainability, Meralco further expanded their air monitoring project’s reach last December 2020.
It has widened the area of observation by installing a sensor in its Business Solutions Center (BSC) building while access to information has also been extended to individual screens by migrating the data online. Employees can now get updates on air quality anytime, anywhere via their corporate-wide communication app called Code Light Chat Bot.
Before the second half of this year ends, Meralco aims to complete this project by again broadening the scope. By then, it hopes to include the area from Ortigas Avenue-facing Technical Services Building (TSB) to the back of the compound next to Temple Drive, giving a more comprehensive read of the 23-hectare compound.
To Meralco, projects such as this is “not only for our employees to feel safer as they slowly ease into normal work operations, but also for us to do our share in improving and protecting the environment in MOC and in our vicinities, as well as for our stakeholders,” said Meralco Chief Sustainability Officer Raymond B. Ravelo.
To learn more, contact your Relationship Manager, call 16210 or email us at corporatepartners@meralco.com.ph.
Story originally posted on Power Club.