While technology enables modern businesses to
achieve profound levels of success, technology comes with a price. Various
innovations have enabled the use of a remote workforce, improvements in
communication and data sharing, globalization, e-commerce, connectedness
through Internet 2.0 and numerous other benefits. These and other benefits of
technology, however, have decreased the need for human labor in some cases,
have negatively affected the environment and have had other consequences.
The largest and most influential companies have
the ability to make a huge impact based on how they address these problems. In
addition to the direct effects, their efforts may spur change in smaller
companies. With China’s population exceeding 1.4 billion people, major corporations
in this country are closely watched. JD.com, which is the Chinese equivalent of
Amazon, had made huge strides in the right direction. Richard Liu, who is the
company’s founder and current CEO, actively guides his company toward
completion of incredible improvements.
The company, which is also known as JingDong, had
humble beginnings with several retail locations scattered across the country.
However, when the SARS epidemic broke out, Richard Liu was forced to make
strategic changes to the company’s operations. He transitioned the company to
an e-commerce company, and today, it serves approximately 300 million customers
regularly. More than that, its total customer base exceeds a billion people.
This e-commerce giant’s business model requires it
to maintain large warehouses and a massive fleet of vehicles for deliveries.
Liu recognized the impact that this business model has on the environment, and
he took action. For many years, JingDong
has regularly published a Corporate Social
Responsibility Report to communicate its efforts and goals directly to
stockholders and to the public. It outlines completed projects and initiatives
that are planned or are in progress.
JD.com recently released a new report, which
outlined the completion of a large solar panel project in its Shanghai
warehouse. Because of the magnitude of this project, the company dramatically
reduced its overall reliance on fossil fuels for energy and its carbon footprint.
This e-commerce company is not stopping there. It intends to complete other
similar projects so that it covers a total of 77 square miles of its facilities
with solar panels within the next 11 years. By doing so, JingDong would have the world’s largest system of roof-mounted solar panels.
This is only one of numerous projects outlined in
this year’s report. For example, JD.com is actively transitioning its fleet of
delivery vehicles to green energy vehicles. It is in the
midst of a rollout of approximately 5,000 green vehicles to replace outdated
gas-powered vehicles. The green vehicles include tricycle delivery vehicles
that are powered by solar energy as well as vans and trucks that run off of
hybrid, electric or hydrogen power. Within two years, the company anticipates
that its entire fleet will be comprised of green vehicles.
In addition to these efforts, the company is
moving away from the use of cardboard delivery boxes, which have a one-time use
functionality. These are being exchanged for green boxes that can be re-used
multiple times before being recycled. The company is also making a social impact
by supporting some of China’s poorest rural communities. It has created 25,000
jobs in these impoverished areas to revive local economies. At the same time,
it has improved delivery service to these areas to ensure that residents there
had access to all of the products they need.
