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Winners of the Forth Award (2004)
Antony Burgmans, the joint winner of the Fourth SAM/SPG Sustainability Leadership Award, is one of the two chairmen at the helm of the Anglo-Dutch food conglomerate Unilever. In this post he has not only steered the company through a radical transformation process, but also demonstrated how a company can contribute to a more sustainable quality of life around the globe. Unilever’s main focus is on three areas: sustainable farming, water and fishing. By setting up pilot projects, Unilever has developed guidelines for more sustainable cultivation of the five most important agricultural products it uses as raw materials: tea, palm oil, spinach, tomatoes and peas. The purpose of these guidelines is to encourage the entire food industry to adopt more sustainable methods in order to assure the long-term productivity of farming systems. Antony Burgmans is a committed member and chairman of the Marine Stewardship Council, a joint initiative set up by Unilever and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Founded in 1996, the purpose of the Marine Stewardship Council is to preserve marine resources and to campaign for their sustainable management. Mr Burgmans also chaired the CEO Panel of the World Water Forum in The Hague in 2000 and in Kyoto in 2003. While Antony Burgmans has been honoured as chairman of a famous multinational for his commitment to sustainability as an industry leader, the name Robin Cornelius is associated with a success story in social and environmental commitment in the field of sports and leisure wear. Since founding Switcher SA in 1981, a manufacturing and trading company for sports and leisure wear, Robin Cornelius has shown enormous commitment to social and environmental principles. The Swiss textile manufacturer has made a stance against child labour, for example by ensuring that no one under the age of 16 is employed to sew garments in Tirupur, a textile centre in southern India. Working in association with NGO’s, Switcher supports seven schools in Tirupur with 1,200 pupils, as well as a mobile school for another 50 street children. Robin Cornelius has decided to pass on the prize money, via the Switcher Foundation, to the charity Swisscontact, so that even more children and teenagers can benefit from a basic school education in future. In collaboration with Swisscontact and the Switcher Foundation, Switcher has also introduced training programmes (YES) for young people aged 16-25 in its factories in India, China and Portugal. The young workers are able to get free education and training in different areas during their work breaks, in the evenings and at weekends. But the company also attaches great importance to environmental aspects of the production process. Last year its Indian partner built a new wastewater plant, which reduced water consumption from 800,000 litres to 50,000 litres. The company also plans to get part of its textile range certified by the Max Havelaar Foundation by 2005. Switcher’s key figures show that Robin Cornelius’ sustainable business model is commercially successful. The company currently employs 160 people and generates a turnover of around CHF 80 million.
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