CSR & ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS ADVISORY COMMITTEE

MC's CSR & Environmental Affairs Advisory Committee is made up of nine external experts. In the year ended March 2011, the committee held meetings in April and October 2010, and provided advice on the MC Group's CSR and environmental activities. At the April 2011 meeting, the committee members expressed their views on supporting recovery efforts following the Great East Japan Earthquake.

On creating sustainable societal and environmental value

• We think that devising indicators to measure MC's contribution in terms of creating societal and environmental value is an extremely difficult task. A vital consideration is the level of detail to apply. Given the broad range of businesses in which MC is engaged, it is probably unrealistic to think that a single indicator could be applied to every individual business. We believe the best approach might be to establish and employ some lowest-common-denominator indicators that would work across every business and region.
• To entrench the concept of creating sustainable societal and environmental value in the company, we believe that MC must make employees aware that this is not an extraordinary demand in terms of the quality of a business.
• The creation of indicators for environmental and CSR activities is a cutting-edge endeavor worldwide. Since MC's operations have various positive and negative impacts, we think that it is important for MC to try to provide related explanations and commentary. Rather than being concerned about how the value might change from year to year, the evaluation horizon for any indicator must take into account the fact that initiatives take 10-20 years to generate results.
• MC needs to recognize that positive societal value also sometimes has a negative flipside in terms of impacts on protecting biodiversity and climate change countermeasures.

On response to the March earthquake

• Our feeling is that many firms and individuals are now starting to realize that they have to take specific action to assist in the clean-up and recovery efforts.
• With its networks, we would like to see MC explain how Japan is moving forward and what the real situation is. We believe that is what MC needs to do to meet the expectations of stakeholders. We would also like to see MC communicate more about its contribution to efforts to restore people's way of life following this disaster.
• We want to see MC make major contributions that will still be remembered a century from now. Besides scholarships for university students, we think that MC should also take actions to bring some happiness to children and other victims, and to give everybody hope.
• It is important to respond to real needs that will be just as relevant 10 years from now, rather than making some big gesture that is quickly forgotten.