Expertise with responsibility

The mere mention of the name Bayer will invariably bring to mind the famous drug called Aspirin which has sold billions, probably trillions, of tablets during the hundred years or so that it has been in the market.

Bayer is also the maker of such bestselling products as Alka-Seltzer, Baygon and Adalat.

Nowadays, Bayer has been thrust to the limelight once more, being the manufacturer of Cipro, so far the only branded drug that has been endorsed by the US government as an antidote to that deadly chemical called anthrax.

But Bayer is more than just a maker of bestselling drugs and insecticides. Based in Leverkusen, Germany, Bayer is a broadly diversified international chemical and pharmaceutical group with sales of more than 30 billion euros (roughly P1.5 trillion) and a net income of 1.8 billion euros last year. It operates in all the continents of the world and employs some 122,100 workers.

For all its size and its clout in the international business community, Bayer, which has been in existence for nearly one-and-half centuries now, is a corporate citizen with a conscience. Fact is, the company has for its slogan: "Expertise with Responsibility."

In the words of Dr. Manfred Schneider, chairman of the board of management of Bayer AG, the company "can only meet its corporate responsibilities — also towards society — if we succeed in reconciling economy with ecology."

In the foreword of a publication called Responsible Care Report, Dr. Schneider wrote: "...alongside all these economic considerations, we must never forget the ecological goals. We must make sure we take care of our earth’s natural resources and use them efficiently so that future generations will continue to have all the options open to them for organizing their lives."

Indeed, Bayer doesn’t just pay lip service to the idea of responsible care. Over the past 10 years, Bayer had spent more than 13 billion euros on building and maintaining environmental protection facilities. In the next five years another seven billion euros will be invested in ecology and safety, making a total of 20 billion euros over a period of 15 years, Dr. Schneider reported at an international press forum attended by more than 120 media representatives from Germany and abroad.

In keeping with its slogan, Bayer has endorsed the principles of Responsible Care, a worldwide chemical industry initiative involving a voluntary commitment to make verifiable, continued improvements in environmental protection and safety.

To attain this, Bayer has developed a comprehensive HES (health, environment and safety) communication and management system which unites the requirements of international standards with Bayer’s own policy guidelines to facilitate internal communication and ensure data transparency.

Last year, the company introduced what it calls Bayer eco-check. This is a new product evaluation system covering the areas of economy, health ecology, life cycle assessment, technology and public value. It enables potential improvements to new products to be identified at the planning stage and allows development aims to be refined if the results of the check demand it. Essential elements in this concept are the economic, scientific and technical assessment of the products. However, it also takes public opinion about its products into account.

Through a program called Product Excellence, Bayer aims to position itself at the forefront of a new quality offensive in the international markets of the chemical and pharamceutical sector. The company believes that every product should comply with the highest standards: It must bring optimum benefit for humankind while having the minimum impact on the environment and while contributing significantly to economic development in the group.

"This new check system is a tool for controlling the product portfolio according to quality to ensure that the company remains true to the concept of sustainability. We shall apply it rigorously to our entire product range," said Dr. Attila Molnar, a member of the board of management of Bayer responsible for environmental protection.

Bayer’s effort to protect the environment goes beyond its corporate walls. Apart from a host of regular publications announcing its various actitivities — past, present and future — Bayer set up in 1991 a Communication Center to maintain a dialogue with the community. Bayer considers it important to provide opportunities for debate between representatives of the company and members of the public. Meeting rooms, a bistro and an exhibition area provide the setting for some 140,000 guests each year from Germany and elsewhere to have informative meetings with Bayer representatives or attend platform debates or lectures including scientific experiments and slide shows.

Among the center’s recent visitors are a group of students and mediamen from the Philippines and Singapore who spent a whole week on a tour of the company’s environmental protection facilities and listening to lectures and exchanging ideas with Bayer engineers, chemists and physicists and other experts.

The visit is part of a Bayer-led initiative known as the "Bayer Young Environmental Envoy Program" to boost the level of environmental awareness among students.

The project was initiated in Thailand in 1995 with the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and carried out with Bayer sponsorship since then.

This year, Bayer broadened the scope of this initiative to other Southeast Asian countries including the Philippines and Singapore. To date, more than 60 students have visited Bayer under this program.

The program is strongly supported by local partners in each of these countries. In the Philippines, Bayer is working with Luntiang Pilipinas, a non-stock, non-profit organization active in reforestation activities. In Singapore, Bayer has partnered with the National Youth Achievement Council and the Singapore Environment Council.

The key element of the project is to allow young people to gain a broader understanding of the interaction of industrial production and environmental issues. During their visit to Germany, the students from the Philippines and Singapore met with Bayer’s environmental specialists as well as with a select group of German students for an exchange of views.

Other activities will be organized in the students’ home countries to encourage them to report on what they have learned from the trip which could be of use in their respective communities.