Ricoh sponsors climate change project on Celsias

MEDIA RELEASE

8 April 2008

Ricoh sponsors climate change project on Celsias

Ricoh has become a Founding Corporate Sponsor of a climate change project on Celsias.com.

Celsias is the first online destination where people and companies can create, join or sponsor projects that combat global warming. Celsias.com, created in New Zealand, was recently named one of the top five climate change websites in the world by The Times newspaper in the UK.

Ricoh has listed its beach clean-up and native bush planting project on Motuihe Island in Auckland's Hauraki Gulf, run by its New Zealand employees under its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programme on the Celsias website.

"We are thrilled to announce that Ricoh has joined the Celsias community. They have recognised that, by placing their CSR projects on the site, the knowledgeable Celsias community can be the judge of their merits. This will build greater trust for their company and its climate change activities," says Nick Lewis, CEO of Celsias.

Lewis says Celsias is also talking to a number of other major global companies who want to list their CSR projects on the site. “Like Ricoh, companies need to have been recognized as taking an active role in climate change before we will let them on Celsias.”

Ricoh New Zealand’s managing director, Mike Pollok, says his firm has been on the sustainability journey for about a decade. The company has a full time sustainability manager and is continually seeking ways to reduce and mitigate its environmental impacts.

“Ricoh New Zealand has been involved on Motuihe Island since 2004 and seen some fantastic progress from our team’s restoration efforts,” says Mr Pollok.

“It’s great to be able to showcase this wonderful project to the world. Over the years, we’ve planted 6900 seedlings on Motuihe Island. In fact, our team calls our area the Ricoh Valley because we’re really starting to transform the place now. We get a real buzz out of what we’re collectively achieving on the Island.”

ENDS

Additional Background on Celsias

The Celsias Community: Ordinary People Achieving Extraordinary Things for the Planet
The Celsias community is comprised of social entrepreneurs (who create and manage projects) and project sponsors (for people and companies who prefer to financially-support projects). Entrepreneurs and sponsors can include anyone from a primary-school child to a corporate executive.

Creating a Celsias Project: From Ideas to Action
Once a social entrepreneur has an idea for a climate change project, creating a project on Celsias is easy; he or she simply completes a handful of fields. The leader can then add pictures and maps, activate a PayPal donation widget, link to posts on the Celsias blog, direct people to a physical location, announce team meetings, organise workdays and keep sponsors updated on a mini project blog.

The Celsias Business Model: Serving Public and Private Projects
Celsias expects the corporate market to find Celsias compelling. “Companies of all sizes can raise the visibility of their corporate social responsibility projects to a wider community,” says Lewis.

About Celsias
Founded in 2006, Celsias (www.celsias.com) helps ordinary people do extraordinary things by creating, joining and sponsoring climate change projects. The Celsias blog is already recognized as a leading climate change blog with writers and readers in more than 120 countries. Web traffic to Celsias.com grew at a compound growth rate of 65% per month during the first 14 months of operation.

About Ricoh
Globally, Ricoh is a leading supplier of office automation equipment and business solutions. Ricoh has a dedication to sustainable business practices and continual business innovation. As a result, Ricoh has been included in the Morningstar Socially Responsible Investment Index since its establishment in 2003, has been a constituent member of the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes (DJSI), and has also been a member of the FTSE4 Good Global Index for four years in a row. For Ricoh New Zealand, the Motuihe Island Restoration Project has been a focus of since 2004, and the next planting day is scheduled for May 2008.

© Scoop Media