Ho Ching, executive director and CEO of Temasek Holdings delivered an interesting speech last week. It is interesting as it speaks about CSR without specifically mentioning CSR.  The speech talks about "Temasek as a long term investor, a willingness to be tested and measured, applying highest goverance standards, being commitment to training people, and the key issue for an investment organisation the speech addresses the issue of bonuses with incentives deferred over time for senior managers, and an expanding stakeholder base", all key elements of any CSR report.  It will be interesting to see if Temasek starts to require those companies in who it invests to strive for the same sustainability and embeds environmental, social and governance issues into its investment portfolio.  This would definitely become a key CSR driver in Singapore. One for TLC's (Temasek linked companies) to watch?

Erin's blog immediately below about the tap versus bottled water debate in Singapore (here) reminded me that Bundoon (just out of Sydney) recently banned the sale of bottled water (see a range of stories here). There, it was local business that decided to pull the product for the sake of the environment and urged people to drink the nearly free and perfectly safe water available from taps (see here for more).

Bottled water is, quite frankly, a mystery to me. I grew up in a remote part of rural Western Australia where we relied on rainwater (runoff from the roof of our house) for all drinking and household use (a taste I've never found in bottled water, by the way). I didn't know water was sold in bottles until the mid-70s, and it wasn't until I came to Hong Kong in 2000 that I started to see bottled water everywhere.

I can see a case for bottled water where it's not safe to drink (although I once spent three months riding a bicycle from Kathmandu to Colombo in the mid-80s and drank local tap water in hundreds of small towns and villages made safe by the inclusion of a few drops of iodine), but the proliferation of brands is beyond ridiculous these days. Companies make all sorts of claims, but I've never tasted water as good as the water we drank for free on the farm when I was a kid, nor the water you can get from the tap in Streaky Bay (I've cycled all around Australia and this place has the best water bar none).

I don't know if Bundoon is on the right track banning water in plastic bottles, and I buy the stuff myself in Hong Kong, but I really do wonder if we haven't lost the plot on this one...

The Singaporean press and blogs have been hot this past week with a debate about bottled versus tap water.  It began with an article by Prof Tommy Koh (chairman of the Asia Pacific Water Forum) and Leong Ching a PhD student at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, where they state they want to start a campaign to get Singaporeans to drink tap water rather than bottled water.  They listed the reasons why not - cost and environment basically.  This call has ignited a debate in the press about the reasons why Singaporeans should or should not drink 'iced water' (tap water) which include health issues, safety and environment. One blogger has set up a site naming restaurants that won't provided iced water. But the waters are muddy, the environmental debate seems to be getting lost in a blogosphere focussed on cost and whether it's simply being 'cheap' to want iced water. You can't help but wonder whether this debate is a precursor to a ban on bottles in the city state to reduce waste.

In a recent Robert Walters poll which asked if people were working harder due to the downturn, 55% out of the 2,600 respondents from 17 countries said they were working more hours per week. The stats from Asia are interesting:  59% of Singaporean respondents reported working between one to ten hours more a week, while in Hong Kong where workers report feeling the greatest impact of the downturn one-third of the respondents report working an average of eight to ten hours more per week. In Thailand, 40% of the respondents are putting in three to five extra hours in a week, while 30% of workers in China put in an average of six to eight hours weekly.  Perhaps the next survey will see if productivity has increased due to all those extra hours or if workers are simply scared to not be seen in the office in the current economic climate.

A survey by the Singapore Business Federation says that only one in four companies in Singapore is prepared to deal with a H1N1 flu pandemic. I suspect that figure would be significantly lower amongst SMEs across the region, which will find it difficult to implement the kind of arrangements that bigger companies can (such as a business continuity plan that includes making healthcare equipment available, visitor management, making provisions for a holding area in case a suspected case surfaces within the company's premises, and a system for alternative working arrangements from home). In companies where employees can't work at home (such as in manufacturing), staff could be split into smaller teams to contain any disease should there be an outbreak. More here.