Vijay Eswaran was invited to speak at the First Preparatory Meeting of the World Congress on Justice, Governance and Law for Environmental Sustainability which convened in Kuala Lumpur on Oct 12-13, 2011.
As the only member of the private sector to be present at this meeting, which is a run up to the global conference popularly known as Rio+20, he took the opportunity to speak about what the private sector in the developing world can do for sustainability. Having embraced green initiaitves in various aspects of the QI Group from its 15-storey operational headquarters in Malaysia, to its boutique resort in Koh Samui, Thailand and its corporate travel agency in Singapore, Vijay explained,
“Business is not just about making profit but contributing to society. Mother Nature cries out in anguish daily as we pillage and plunder her diminishing treasures. We have co-existed with nature and that is our strength. It is thus, possible to co-exist and embrace nature once again.”
He drew the attention of the convention to the serious challenge of lack of safe drinking water facing us today in the 21st century.
“Even during floods, the most significant challenge is to provide clean drinking water because at such times, this commodity is hard to come by. Packaged and bottled water also poses a big problem in terms of environmental hazard.
Hence, the way forward is to use technology, as today’s business is the business of sustainability,” he said, and drew applause for his company’s innovative, water dispensing machine which extracts humidity from the air and turns it into safe drinking water.
Vijay pointed out that QI Tower, his company’s 15-storey state-of-the-art operational headquarters in Petaling Jaya uses the system to supply drinking water for its 300 employees who work in the building.
“We are now testing the product in Abu Dhabi, Sudan and Saudi Arabia,” noted Vijay.
He said the QI Group has been embracing green technology from day one at all its 20 odd locations worldwide. Its 1,000 global employees and another 5,000 who are employed indirectly have all been educated on importance of protecting the environment.
“Our green products emphasise recycling, saving energy, going paperless as well as adhering to other strict environmental-friendly policies.”
Two units of the Water from Air machines were installed at the meeting to provide drinking water to the delegates for the duration of the conference. The two day conference ended with the drafting of the Kuala Lumpur Declaration which will be presented at the Rio+20 Conference in Rio de Janeiro in June 2012.
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