Image via Real Simple

This podcast is long overdue, but better late than never, right?

Back in March, when I was working as a freelance reporter for Taiwan Business TOPICS, I interviewed Jeff Delkin and Rachel Speth, the co-founders of bambu, a so-called “renewable ideas company” based in Shanghai that manufactures bamboo housewares, kitchen products and tabletops.

LISTEN:

ResponsibleChina: Jeff Delkin and Rachel Speth, bambu

Music courtesy of MadMaxXB from Garageband.

Also, read my post on WorldChanging about their new collective, called NEST, that brings several of Shanghai’s environmentally and socially responsible retailers together with a mission to promote “design with a conscience.”

Image courtesy of bambu

In addition to the podcast, here’s a short Q&A I conducted by email:

How many products have you sold, as of the end of 2007?

Over 200,000

What is the price range of your products?

We offer over 120 products; everything of which is made from bamboo. Our retail prices range from $2 for our unique Sporks and Snapstix chopsticks, to $46 for our large hand-coiled bowls.

How many employees do you have?

Rachel and I are supported by four full-time production staff in China and Vietnam. In the U.S., we outsource with a couple of firms who support us with sales and order fulfillment and inventory management.

How many craftspeople do you work with?

In China we work with several producer groups, in total, approximately 80 craftspeople. In Vietnam, that’s a more complicated question. Our woven baskets and hand coiled boils are produced in a cottage industry model. That means up to several hundred individual craftspeople are involved, working in their villages, and in some cases, supplementing their farming in between harvest seasons.

How many stores sell your products?

In the U.S. and Canada we sell bambu products in over 1500 stores. We also sell our products in Australia, UK, France and even Iceland.

Who are your major competitors?

In any one of our seven categories, we might have a competitor or two. But, we do not have any competitors who offer the depth and breadth of a product range similar to ours. And if there are any competing categories, the similarities end there. We take a more holistic approach to our brand. We have our production centers audited for working conditions.

We have our products approved food-safe by the FDA. We are the only company to have several of our raw material (bamboo) sources certified organic. We use only environmentally friendly packaging materials. By working ‘at the source’ we’re able to bring to market quality, innovative product designs.

How many dollars have you contributed to the “1% For the Planet” campaign?

1% For The Planet was created with the help of Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia, a company we have long supported and admired. We’re proud to have provided over $50,000 to non-profit organizations through our association with 1% For The Planet. Centered on the belief that companies can and should share a responsibility for the natural environment, particularly, when you consider that every business in some ways takes from the environment. It’s a sensible way to give back.

We’ve supported research work, consumer education, salmon protection, rainforest protection, initiatives in China through Conservation International, and wildlife preservation through WWF. The model allows us to choose pre-selected and approved organizations.

In fact, we include each of our staff in the process. Everyone gets a vote to decide where we make our contributions. open the selection process to each of our staff.

Please describe your contributions to the Grameen Foundation.

We were first introduced to the work of Grameen Bank which introduced the concept of micro-lending to poverty level women in Bangladesh. It’s a marvelous system that breaks the conventions of typical lending institutions and directly impacts individuals through small loans to help people start and grow a small business. That appeals to us.

The Grameen Foundation is relatively new to China. We have been wanting to find a way to ‘give back’ to China since this is where we work and live. The Grameen Foundation does that. The Foundation serves sister lending groups and individuals in rural China. While China’s economic growth is well documented, there are over 300 million people living on less than a dollar a day.

Rachel and I are involved with the GF Shanghai Volunteers Group, and also support Grameen through bambu. We are involved in several projects to raise awareness among our customers about the important work Grameen does.

Please describe your relationship with Toyota’s hybrid cars.

From bambu’s Web site: “We thought hard about this. Quoting myself: “We thought hard about this, the auto industry is a huge contributor to carbon emissions, but we applaud the efforts that The Toyota Company is making. They are out in front, making strides in changing the industry business model. The Toyota Company is one of the most admired socially responsible companies in any industry, and in the auto industry, their record and reputation is second to none.” We realize that at least for the foreseeable future, and until mass transportation can serve the needs of most individuals, personal auto ownership is a fact of life. And we’re all for supporting the move to more energy efficient options.

A note from Erica:

Here’s an interesting departure from our regularly scheduled blogging about the environment and the Olympics, which often dominates the coverage here on RespChi.

Beijing-based blogger Van Yang writes about CSR in the context of intellectual property rights, something which I briefly mentioned last year, in response to an article by Cornell University Matt Perkins. Blogger IP Dragon does a good job of covering this topic, too, and he wrote an interesting post, referencing RespChi, about the links between intellectual property and the environment here.

Anyway, back to Van: The question is, can open sourcing and copycat engineering actually be a good thing when it comes to creating simple yet innovative solutions to problems like e-waste, pollution, poverty and other crises? We’ll let Van continue asking the questions…

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By Van Yang

Intellectual property concerns are a big reason why many businesses aren’t too keen on entering the Chinese marketplace.  Why put all the time, money and effort into lawyers and patents if someone off the street is going to reverse-engineer it, then sell it on the street for 30% the price and with a picture of a monkey on it?

But are these engineers–these entrepreneurs–really pirates or heroes?  We often lament how companies reject open standards and try to stifle you with proprietary file types, connection heads and configurations.  I understand the desires of a company to segment market-share and promote its own technology, but the consumer is the loser when they have to buy different types of phone chargers when they buy a different gadget.  Not only are they forced to spend more money, but the environment doesn’t fare well either with this excessive generation of e-waste.

I was inspired to this topic because of a recent cell phone charger incident.  Having just arrived in Beijing, I’m borrowing a friend’s cellphone.  She had to leave for a business trip before giving me the charger, so I went out to buy my own.  I meandered into a little local shop, perusing the shelves for a charger.  Not finding one, I asked the store clerk, “Do you have any cell phone chargers for a Samsung phone?”

Entirely ignoring the brand, he responded, “Cell phone charger? Yeah, we have those. Here.” After opening up the box and staring at it for a minute, I had no clue how this was supposed to work.  So then he showed me the Omnipotence Travel Charger:

Isn’t that interesting?  They broke the design concept down to the most common denominator.  It’s not very convenient, since I can’t talk and charge at the same time, but useful nonetheless.  It cost me 8 yuan, which is about US$1.50.

Perhaps Chinese copy-cat engineers aren’t pirates, but are the incognito vanguard for an open-source technology movement. Open-source technology refers to the philosophy that each individual or organization develops technology for the common good with out expecting profit or patenting. Open-source has gained the most ground in the IT arena, its greatest champion being Google, Inc.  Google’s “do no evil” motto includes allowing users to freely import and export their data into applications other then its own.  Since users can easily try different programs without losing their data integrity, the playing field is leveled among applications.  The “best” program is measured by popularity, and software programmers are constantly forced to improve and innovate to keep ahead of the competition.  The end result is high quality products at either a competitive price or, the most attractive of all prices, free.

In the physical engineering world, the Goodstove movement seeks to design efficient stoves for the millions using traditional or less efficient biomass stoves, so that these clean stoves, if adopted, would help in mitigating climate change.

Now, this is not about advocating the open-source of everything. Talented people who design amazing products should be the ones who reap the reward for their efforts.  Even Google balances and mixes its open-source with closed source.  But it does beg the question about a community of designers and engineers opening and embracing certain standards for the benefit of all.   Open-source boosts innovation by tapping into the community to help polish, publish, and propagate products, and invites new competitors to enter the field, whether they be a start-up in San Deigo or a workshop in Wudong.

What do you think?  A bunch of pirates or hero innovators?

Excerpts from the July issue of the McKinsey Quarterly:

(Illustration via McKinsey Quarterly)

“Cleaner energy for China: An interview with the chairman of ENN Group”
By Michael Wang is a principal in McKinsey’s Shanghai office, where David Xu is a director.

July 2008

China has a reputation for relying on heavily polluting energy sources, such as coal. But efforts by innovative Chinese companies are under way to convert the country’s abundant coal supplies into sources of cleaner energy. One of these companies is the privately held ENN Group, better known in China for its subsidiary XinAo Gas, which is listed in Hong Kong. The chairman of ENN, Wang Yusuo, founded the company in 1989 as one of the country’s first natural-gas distributors; its debut project was piping gas to the city of Langfang, in Hebei Province. ENN, which now has more than 20,000 employees, supplies natural gas to more than 40 million people in nearly 70 cities in China and liquefied natural gas to filling stations in more than 20 Chinese cities.

The Quarterly: Why did you enter coal chemical engineering and clean energy?

China has an increasing need to develop clean-coal technologies, since the country is rich in coal and poor in oil and gas. Coal accounts for over 70 percent of China’s total energy consumption, but the use of coal in power plants has created serious environmental pollution because of high emissions of carbon dioxide, among other pollutants. In the 1960s, China pursued an energy strategy focused on oil and gas instead of coal. That made coal-based clean energy a huge business opportunity.

The Quarterly: How has ENN developed its clean-energy business in China?

Wang Yusuo: We have focused on three areas. First, through our subsidiary XinAo Gas, we distribute the clean energy produced by others. Second, we are involved in producing clean energy ourselves by building production bases for methanol in various parts of the country, usually close to coal-mining regions, and by rolling out dimethyl ether plants, which use methanol as the raw material. In addition, ENN established the world’s first commercial dimethyl ether filling station for buses, in Shanghai, in 2007. We’re also increasing our investment in solar energy. We imported a photovoltaic-module production line from the United States and expect to launch a new-generation product within two to three years.

Finally, we are aggressively pushing for the greater use of clean energy. In response to the Chinese government’s environmental policies, we’ve proposed an energy-saving and emission-reduction plan in an attempt to be the nation’s clean-energy service provider. This plan integrates biomass, solar, geothermal, and methane into a package for a given city’s households and businesses. The idea is that the city could benefit environmentally through the use of multiple energy sources.

Subscribe as a member to read the full article.

We’ve mentioned them before (thanks, Mark) in our post about social entrepreneurship in Sichaun, but in case you didn’t hear the first time around, Wokai.org is raising loan capital for microfinance institutions in China.

A big thank you to co-founders Courtney McColgan and Casey Wilson for referring to ResponsibleChina in their recent blog post at Wokai Adventures.

A message from Courtney:

Wokai [is] a non-profit dedicated to alleviating poverty in China one loan at a time. Wokai achieves this goal through a user-driven microfinance website that connects contributors around the world with borrowers in China. Users choose borrowers to support, watch repayments, and pick who to fund next. Users also consume and share user-rated and user-generated content on China microfinance. Through information and capital exchange, Wokai aims to grow the microfinance sector in China and increase opportunities for the poor.For more information, check out our website at www.wokai.org.

(Image via BlogGreen)

Chinese products have been called “toxic” and created mass consumer unease recently, so China is not the obvious place to start looking for organic baby clothes. Still, with the population’s buying power and manufacturing capacity, baby clothes could be one of the most important markets for China’s economy. Sherry Poon, founder and owner of wobabybasics, a company that makes and sells organic clothes in Shanghai, is aiming to prove that “Made in China” can be organic, and she aims to spread a little style and love in the process. (The company was recently featured at the recent EcoFair in Shanghai.)

Organic cotton means that its seeds haven’t been genetically modified or treated with pesticides and that it is grown without the use of chemical toxins, which can be harmful, especially to kids. Finding cotton made without all the mainstream chemicals and pesticides is a difficult task in China. When Poon started her company, she looked for factories and suppliers around Shanghai to “lower the embodied energy of the product” (or use less energy trucking the stuff around). But in manufacturing, sometimes you have to go a little farther than home to find the right raw material.

All the companies would tell me that their cotton fabrics were all organic…it would seem obvious that cotton fabric was all natural. However, cotton farming and textile production is riddled with toxic chemicals, rendering their seemingly inert fiber to be highly toxic and potentially harmful for users. Some companies were able to produce certificates for their organic fabrics. When two of the certificates were absolutely identical and did not check out with the certification board, my optimism dimmed a little.

wobabybasics ended up as a Canadian-owned company contracting with a Danish clothing factory, selling to mostly Western consumers. Poon wanted to work with Chinese suppliers but found they were “still struggling to find their place in the market and are concerned about making profits.” Well, aren’t all businesses? China is as good a place as any–in fact, maybe better–to turn the manufacturing of a niche product into a profitable mainstream business. Poon says recently there has been an increase in suppliers carrying “certified organic and eco fabrics.” Chinese producers are understandably responding to the market as it stands now, and we haven’t given them the noise they need to go totally organic yet.

China is not the only one slow to take up more environmentally conscious products. Like most people selling green concepts, Poon says customers will base their purchasing decisions on performance and design before environmental factors:

…clients are more inclined to purchase clothes they find attractive rather than because it is organic. The fact that the products are organic and ethically made are just a bonus.

Learn more about that type of “bonus” by checking out these other cool businesses in China: Shokay (a luxury fabric line) and Mei Xiang Cheese Factory (an artisan cheese social enterprise). Both unique initiatives, supported by Ventures in Development, aim to capitalize on China’s abundant yak population in a sustainable way.

Big money, big change: General Electric pushes for environmental laws and revs up Ecomagination in China

The Wall Street Journal recently hosted a special event, ECO:nomics: Creating Environmental Capital, that focuses on a “CEO-level view of the rapidly developing relationship between the environment and the bottom line.” Program participant Jeffrey Immelt, chairman and CEO of General Electric, spoke on “The Environment and the Business of Business.”

The interview focused on why he believes in good old capitalism, in all its shades of green. Immelt is planning on greening his sizable pile of green bills mainly through Ecomagination and pushing for stricter climate change regulations. China is a key part of the Ecomagination plan to green and profit from the Olympics. In the long-term China and Ecomagination are planning a long-term relationship, also.

GE has received its fair share of attention for Ecomagination, a campaign lead by Immelt to promote sales of GE’s energy saving and creating technologies. Ecomagination is doing big, profitable business in China and the relationship is only growing.

Immelt is also lobbying the U.S. government for mandatory caps on carbon emissions. He helped form the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a group of corporations and environmental organizations “that have come together to call on the federal government to quickly enact strong national legislation to require significant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions.” Stronger laws like the USCAP wants will weaken China’s argument that it doesn’t have to act because industrialized nations have not acted either. Also, stronger laws means businesses need to buy new technology, such as the technology that GE makes in China.

USCAP goals include encouraging innovation and fostering economic growth with green house gas policies, a cap-and-trade program, and research and technology.

Immelt makes a concise case for putting more money into green research and development.

I’m an investor, I’m a capitalist and I’m a businessman. So I believe that I could generate earnings for my investors through technology.

He is not alone in this stance. Some leaders, like Barack Obama, think Detroit could take a listen. Immelt keeps going, with what I think is a very strong logic.

There’s no percentage for any CEO in the world to run his or her business thinking that there are not going to be carbon caps someday. Because the day it becomes law, you’re five years late. And you either get out ahead of these things or you get stomped by them.

If the CEO of one of the world’s largest companies thinks that serious action on climate change is inevitable, the fight on Capital Hill maybe coming into the final rounds.

Of course, Capital Hill and politicians need to consider how other countries are legislating greenhouse gases, or GHG. China comes into this debate more than any other country because of its geo-political size, the size of its economy, and the size of its export business to the United States. Many politicians, including George Bush, refuse to move on GHG legislation before China does.

The WSJ reminded Immelt of this common argument by saying, “…we face extreme competition from emerging countries in Asia…” Fair enough. The obvious follow-up question asked is, “does it make sense for you to say, OK, in the U.S., we’re going to impose a cap on our businesses, but there’s going to be no such cap in China…?” Immelt answers:

What legislation will try to do, is to have some market-clearing mechanism for what’s going to happen globally. But, I’ve got to tell you that we’ll do, I don’t know, $15 billion, $16 billion of Ecomagination products this year. Probably $2 or $3 billion will go to China and India. So it’s a great opportunity for this country to develop technologies that are going to be used on a global basis.

Immelt also takes on another popular argument against action on climate change: it costs too much and will hurt the economy. He defends his position by saying,

Costs are going to be borne no matter what. I would say we’re actually already paying for it. $110 oil, we’re already paying for it. Costs are going to go up.

The question is do we get ahead of it and bring these [clean] technologies down the learning curve ahead of time, or does it just get thrust on us in an incredibly impossible way? And that’s what leaders have to decide.

The WSJ’s reporter made a legitimate point by asking:

Part of people’s business plans is to go to Washington and get legislation passed that requires people to buy their products. So one question I would have is how much of Ecomagination is actually underwritten by tax subsidies? And how, as a private investor, do you justify having public taxpayers get into this business?

Immelt defended his tax subsidies perfectly:

Government tax policy, or economic policy, ought to reflect the benefits to the economy and what the government wants to have happen.

Think about something like the production tax credit [which gives tax credits to alternative-energy companies]. One of the reasons the government wanted to use it was to get more renewable energy in place. We acquired our wind business in 2001. The cost for electricity and wind was about 16 cents, 17 cents a kilowatt-hour. Now it’s half that. The production tax credits worked.

Immelt, whose business is international, is thinking about GHG regulation internationally. He knows that he stands to benefit from regulations in the U.S., specifically boosting his production and sales in China. Not afraid to get out ahead of China on these laws, Immelt is betting China will eventually have to follow if the U.S. leads. Can Immelt and his CEO friends push the U.S. out of the blame game with China over global warming? Can we get past finger-pointing and make money for global companies in the process? Ecomagine that.

Immelt talks more about Washington here, and tree-huggers like Grist.org support him here.

Click on the links below for more stories related to global green business and Jeffrey Immelt’s interview:

• Gristmill: “ECO:nomics: Immelt vs. the ideologues”
• The Santa Barbara Independent: “Execs, Politicos, Journos, Enviros Talk Eco-Trends at Bacara“
• Green Tech Media: “Bottom Line for Green Initiatives: Good or Bad?

And here are some other corporate members of the USCAP alliance:

• Duke Energy
• Dupont
• Ford
• General Motors
• Johnson and Jonson
• The Dow Chemical Company
• to name a very few of many.

And also coming to the party are the following environmental organizations:

• The Natural Resources Defense Council
• The Nature Conservancy
• World Resource Institute
• National Wildlife Federation
• and there are more of this type too.

(Editor’s note: Please welcome our first post by contributing blogger Sophia Mendelsohn about some of the benefits of luxury consumption and “lifestyle” publications in China!)

China’s public is receiving a mixed message from mainstream media. On the one hand, they are told development is destroying the environment. On the other hand, the messages equate luxury and consumption in China with the ever sought after higher living standard.

This means that an effective media campaign promoting environmental protection is going to have to embrace the inevitable consumption by offering the consumer a green option that is sexy and fashionable. This also serves to counter the idea that environmental problems are too large for the average person to minimize.

Despite the common conception that state-controlled media doesn’t report bad news, a large part of the environmental news in China covers major disasters in country. Much of the rest goes to playing the blame game with the U.S. and other developed nations.

In December 2005, chemical pollution in the Song Hua River near Harbin, endangered the water supply for millions, making for some very telling pictures. In 2007, Taihu Lake near Shanghai turned blue and green from human and industrial pollution. That same year, over 15,000 kilograms of dead fish floated en masse to the surface of Wuhan’s East Lake. The bad news was that this was not the first time.

(Photo of Taihu Lake via PacificEnvironment)

These events, and others, were covered heavily by state-run media, discussed on personal blogs and in chat rooms. With this kind of coverage, it is easy to understand the belief that environmental problems in China are beyond the control of the average person.

The other environmental news that filters down to mainstream press in China is often focused on blaming the U.S. and other Western nations for climate change and global warming. Part of that argument is that the West has an excessively lavish a lifestyle and consumes too much, thereby emitting greenhouse gases.

Of course, you don’t have to look farther than Shanghai’s Nanjing Xi Road or Beijing’s Wangfujing to see the”luxurious” Western nations are in good company. And it seems the more the merrier. Gucci plans to open another five stores in China within the next year.

As luxury brands barge their way into the market, they are accompanied by their close cousin, the lifestyle magazine. Though in a twist away from the stereotype, many of these magazines are talking about more than just clothing and movie stars. Recently a number of lifestyle magazines have featured “green stories,” covering everything from eco-trends to socialite environmental heroes.

Although it would be fair to grumble about a certain amount of “greenwashing,” lifestyle publications serve an important role in educating the Chinese public about environmental issues. “Green glam” brings an element of sexiness to the change and effort that is involved in improving a new consumer’s lifestyle.

They also offer a softer, more approachable angle than newspapers running stories about whole eco-systems being taken down by heavy industry. Without these publications, the public’s main access to eco-issues would be all doom and gloom.

Trends Magazine’s Chinese-language publications let loose a frenzy of green stories in ‘07 and look to be keeping it up in ‘08. Trends publishes about every glossy magazine you see on the corner kiosk—think Cosmo, Bazaar, Esquire, National Geographic Traveler, and Men’s Health, to name a few.

Trends established a website focused on their eco-travel for their readers. The site opens to words like “trendy environmental protection” and panoramic views of snow-topped mountains in Tibet and other western provinces in China.

You could fairly argue that the very snow photo-shopped onto the site will melt away with the carbon emissions produced by traveling to them. However, with the Chinese domestic tourist industry moving around one billion people a year, we can safely argue that those emissions are going to be emitted regardless.

But sites like this still serve an important purpose. They reach out to tourists with plane ticket already in hand and alert them to the drastic increase in tourism, and how it is affecting the local eco-system. While promoting travel, these sites declare environmental protection must be taken into account. In addition, Trends directs readers to non-profit environmental organizations like Greenpeace and WWF China. It’s true that they are not promoting tents over five-star hotels, but awareness like this on an attractive platform is a step in the right direction.

Just like China’s consumption, “green glam” coverage does not stop at travel. The upscale fashion magazine, Bazaar (November 2007) suggests easy steps you can take in your own home to reduce your environmental impact, like shutting off lights and successfully making LEDs seem as precious as Chanel. It also promotes the “I am not a plastic bag” bag as more than an extra purse but to actually cut down on use of plastic.

Like travel and fashion, glamorous eco-friendly weddings are not to be left behind as China revs up.

Cosmo (July 2007) covered green weddings particularly well, making a direct connection between the extravagance of a wedding and the extra greenhouse gases produced as a result. Similar to the American way of measuring everything in football fields, the Chinese-language site notes “the carbon emissions from your wedding could not even fit in six swimming pools.”

This month Esquire magazine has green billboard advertisements up with banners declaring the publication to be a fighter for the environment. You can find them in Shanghai’s main shopping street, right next to the permanent Tiffany & Co. billboard.

While organizations that promote the restraint and reduction of consumption deserve great credit, we need to look at alternative strategies as both shopping and pollution spread out from Beijing and Shanghai to every corner of China.

Lifestyle media’s trendy promotion of small environmental changes in an answer to two problems.

• One, it empowers a public easily left feeling helpless by the scale of the problem, or vindicated by heavy industry’s role in causing it.
• Two, it acknowledges the inevitable path of progress and works with consumer’s cravings, rather than against them.

While they can be easily dismissed as “greenwashing,” glossy covers do more good than we give them credit for. They contribute to popular awareness of the issues and suggest realistic small solutions that your average Zhou have a chance at. These possibilities are well worth the trees they are printed on.

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For more information about luxury consumption in China, browse these links:

• China Luxury Summit: “An annual gathering of luxury executives for the hottest issues concerning China’s luxury market.”
• WorldWatch: “Luxury Spending: China’s Affluent Entering ‘Enjoy Now’ Phase of Consumption”
• Amazon.com: “Elite China: Luxury Consumer Behaviour in China,” by Pierre Xiao Lu
• TNS Consumer Survey: “Luxury Brands in China” video
• McKinsey Quarterly: “The new Chinese consumer” and “The value of China’s emerging middle class”

“China’s First SRI To Be Issued“
China CSR
March 24, 2008

Industrial Fund Management has been approved by the China Securities Regulatory Commission to begin the first socially responsible investment product in China.

It will be issued through eight Chinese banks and other securities companies on March 28. The most prominent feature of the SRI is that it will be mainly used for investing into socially responsible listed companies.

The company may face problems initially as it attempts to delve into the murky acocunting of some companies, even some of those that are listed. And because many Chinese companies’ definitions of corporate social responsibility place emphases on charitable giving rather than true environmental sustainability or labor rights, the fund may have some surprises in the future.

Some concerns about the prospect of socially responsible investing in China include the following:

• China’s poor human rights and environmental record
• Poor transparency and disclosure
• Stock market slump

Here’s an article from a couple of weeks ago that further explains the introduction of “SRI” into China:

“China plans 1st ’socially responsible’ mutual fund“
Environmental News Network
March 11, 2008

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China’s Industrial Fund Management Co Ltd is planning to launch a fund investing in shares of “socially responsible” Chinese listed firms, the first mutual fund product of its kind in the country, state media said on Tuesday. The company, which earlier this month received regulatory approval to launch the fund, has not published a prospectus. But analysts expect it to target companies engaged in environmentally friendly projects.

“What’s different is that the fund will concentrate its investment on listed firms with decent performance in terms of social responsibility,” the China Securities Journal said.

….

Some analysts said the new offering from Industrial Fund Management could be a hard sell in China, in part due to a stock market slump that has hit overall mutual fund sales.

“It remains unclear whether the fund would be successful in China because most domestic investors focus on returns but not social responsibility,” said Zhou Liang, head of China research for Lipper, a Reuters company, which tracks more than 95,000 funds worldwide.

For more information about socially responsible investing, please check out these Web sites:

• ASrIA - Association for Sustainable and Responsible Investment in Asia
• SRI Asia - Specialists in Socially Responsible Investing, Indexing and Research in Asia.
• Social Investment Forum - Trade association of the U.S. social investment industry and community. Related news, research, and user-friendly member directory.
• Open SRI - Web collaborative SRI rating platform
• Green Money Journal - Newsletter that provides resources and contacts for environmentally and socially responsible investing.