For those of you who are in the real estate/ building sector, CBRE has recently launched their first edition of Sustainability Asia (right click for PDF download), a publication dedicated to all things green about our built environment.
Recent Green Building News, City profiles, Interviews with NGO leaders, and special features, and given this is the first edition, they have jam packed it with content.. although, I would really like to see a “tips” section for various real estate professionals that would provide an immediate knowledge transfer.
Hi everyone, my name is Kimberly and I have recently been asked to contribute to this website in the area of health, food, nutrition & well-being. I’ve been in China for almost 8 and a half years and have always been conscious of our surroundings in terms or air, water, food but have never really taken the time to explore certain areas for myself. Until now that is. Over the past 10 months I have moved on from just being well through exercise and fitness to seriously trying to be well through what I eat. A TCM course, food therapy and now Integrative Nutrition has played a huge part in my shift from some packaged foods, eating out and convenience to whole foods, grains and incorporating organic produce as much as possible.
With the aim of trying to understand what the term “organic” means in Shanghai and of course being able to answer confidently that organic farms are relatively healthy and the produce better than the local wet markets, I embarked on a few weekend adventures to the organic vegetable farms to find out if and how their farms are clean, chemical free and healthy.
Over the last few weeks, I have been spending a lot of time things about the risks of China. More specifically the risks that either are not thought through, are thought to be too low to consider, or are believed to be removed by a third party relationship. It is a situation that, as the interview below will show, is almost systematic in the outsourced manufacturing game, and was highlighted by the recent strike at one of Apple’s Suzhou based suppliers two weeks.
It was a strike that particularly frustrated me because Apple has had 3 or 4 other incidents in the past two years, and had in my mind simply not done anything to address the problems in a productive manner. So, I asked long time friend and labor compliance specialist Pierig Vezin (Founder and CEO of WethicA) to answer some questions for me based on his experiences in the field
What are the biggest compliance issues that exist in china?
The more common compliance issue in China is about working time. It is found in almost every factory as the Chinese law is quite strict (40 hours per week), but the reality is that the average working time is among the highest worldwide with around 70 to 75 hours per week.
The toughest compliance issue, bounded labour (i.e. young child labour), is rarely an issue of big factories. Second to the issue of child labor though is that we regularly meet factories that pay workers once a year only, which essentially means that workers can’t resign from their job once they have started. This kind of practice leads workers to be fully dependent on the factory, even in case of major needs to change.
Have you ever experienced to find any hair in the meal, even in the middle of the sandwich? How much is it terrible? It is the worst thing if this happen in the morning. However it happened to me. A funny thing is that this kind of happening is not the first time. McDonald was supposed to give fun experiences to my family, but it was really few. I believe McDonald is calling its customers by “cheap price and toy” How dare?
However they will do its business well and survive for long time in the future I believe. We are really weak customers by giveaway and price. We go look for cheap prices every time. We are eager to find lower than other products. As long as we do not seek cheap, budget and lower prices, we may encounter another experience like this.
Wake up, it is not absolutely right choice with lower prices. Lower prices can say its quality.
1) Chengdu eventually achieved 315 days of fine air quality in 2009
On December 16th, 2009, the number of days with fair air quality in the downtown Chengdu achieved 15 days earlier the livelihood project goal put forward by the Municipal Government at the beginning of last year to “reach 311 days of fine air quality in the downtown area”. According to the statistics, in 2009 Chengdu has eventually achieved 315 days with fine air quality.
2) Western China’s largest LED production base operates in Pixian
On January 16th, the first phase of the “Sichuan Yuanli Photoelectric”, the biggest LED production base in West China, was officially put into operation in the Pixian Modern Industrial Port of Chengdu. It is learnt that Sichuan Yuanli Photoelectric’s LED production base invested with 540 million yuan, was started construction in May, 2009, which is the first LED project put into production in the industrial zone, and is also currently the biggest LED production base in the western region.
I have looked and observed what features and functions I can use instead of traditional tablet PC, and realized and wished something iPad does not have on the product. Without looking a real product I can not explain whole things, but I just want to share what especially I want it to have.
1. Web Cam or Camera
I can not see and actually it does not have this function. Based on my experience of usage and other competitors like tablet PCs and netbooks, this function is the most basic function now for businessmen and mobile entertainers. I am the really heavy user as well, conferencing with my coworkers or talking via skpye with my family in my home country, South Korea. In fact I used to use a lot during my business trips.
Hopefully I can expect other companies such as iLuv, iHome or others would make these gears for iPad like iPhone and iPod.
2. USB Port
Basically this iPad would be synchronized whatever we want to transfer data into iPad. However without iTune connect, simply I want to share and upload any data. In order to do this I believe USB port is easier than others so far. How do you think? Right? Photo uploading and document transferring.
Sure, I believe this would be same. Probably accessory companies will make this too.
3. HDMI Port
What a big missing for me. I like to watch movies or other through a big screen though I do not have over 60inch LCD or LED yet. Even iPad does not have TV-OUT port either. Youtube will be better if we can see via big screens by HDMI cable.
I believe this third missing fucntion would be introduced by other accessory companies.
Well, without any real product observation, it is so hard to decide whether this is good or not good. However that’s obvious. Apple is always trying to create big impact products. After iPhone, iPad would be another big player and a good contributor for Apple.
When it is my recall turn? Actually my car is one of these models which were suspended. At the first time of purchase I was told their quality is the world best and there was no company that could superior to the Toyota. However other players such as Honda, Hyundai, Kia other American brands will be little or big happy by Toyota’s unprecedented recall incident.
The news of recall just released couples of days ago and now total number of vehicles could reach 10 million cars in the world. Anyway If they found this defect, Toyota should take a responsibility about this issue and compensate its customers not only to fix the defect but also to compensate the consumers because the defect is really related with driver’s lives.
Unfortunately the most selling models are suspended models such as Corolla and Camry. What about the market price of the used toyota values? Who could compensate this market values that no one wants to buy the critical defect(s) on Toyota cars.
I hope this is the last and final defect report and no more after these.
It’s announced yesterday, Jan 28th. iPad, We had waited for a long time and we were much excited with the rumors on online world, and finally now it came to the world with the name of iPad (little fun name, I am so curious why it is “i+Pad”.
Well, Apple will start selling the product from Marchwith WiFiversion and April with 3G. If you would watch the iPad, you would be in love with that. In fact I was little skeptical about this product. I expected several different things and features, but some of them were not selected within features. I believe I got too much surrounded in tablet-pc concept even though it is in tablet-pc category. It is wrong……. Read the rest of this entry »
It was published last 25th Jan by Financial Times that Thunderbird MBA school is the first top school for international business, and then University of South Carolina, Moore, is ranked at 2nd place.
As we are working in global business, once again, this is something we may need to know. Working in dynamic environment and being cross-cultural atmosphere are not easy as someone say. In order to get accustomed with any culture and environment, we need lot of efforts. In this view, it could be a criteria to you if you would consider to get MBA degree for your next future.
You may take a look other schools for each major in MBA programs. Now the Financial Times released the ranks for each majors; Finance, accountancy, entrepreneurship, and so on.
Well, congrats all schools on these ranks and all the top schools in each field University of Chicago, Brigham Young University, Babson College, University fo Nortre Dame, U of Virginia, and Northwestern University.
Following up on some earlier posts about driving sustainability through education, McKinsey has loaded an interview with the Blair Sheppard, dean of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.
Encouraging to see these shifts, although I personally would like to see more schools really integrate sustainability into their core curriculum. That, rather than just capture those that are interested, really training on a braod base the concepts of sustainability as they relate to how decisions can have an environmental impact for the better or worse.
That, there are externalities that need to considered going forward
For those of you who are in the real estate/ building sector, CBRE has recently launched their first edition of Sustainability Asia (right click for PDF download), a publication dedicated to all things green about our built environment.
When it is my recall turn? Actually my car is one of these models which were suspended. At the first time of purchase I was told their quality is the world best and there was no company that could superior to the Toyota. However other players such as Honda, Hyundai, Kia other American brands will be little or big happy by Toyota’s unprecedented recall incident.
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