BY ZHANG XIUHUA

On the lawns and central garden of a community in the Haidian District of Beijing, called "Enjili", one can see a number of signs with the "Michelin" logo standing as tall as a man.

This is part of the partnership program launched by the French tire firm in making the community "green" and "environment-friendly" and as part of its efforts to perform its social responsibility.

 Michelin was the first to cooperate with this community. It started with the Green Bin program. It has placed green and blue bins on the curbsides and distributed family bins for different garbage and put up billboards for disseminating ideas about how to make the community’s environment clean and more livable. It has also opened a library containing environment protection books and provided the community with garbage collection carts and uniforms for sanitation workers.

 Besides, it has started an education program, focusing on environmental protection. From the very start, a number of experts in the area were invited to form an advisory team to provide guidance in environmental protection, garbage disposal, energy and water conservation and "green consumption".

To make the residents more environment conscious and inculcate the idea of "going green" into their minds, the community has carried out a variety of other activities, including the election of "community green stars" and putting their photos on the billboards for others to emulate, competition in drawing and the issuing of booklets of tips on environmental protection.

The going-green activities have penetrated into the kindergarten and primary school. The community kindergarten organized the drawing activities with the central theme as "green world"  letting the children draw out what green world in their minds. In the primary school, environmental protection has become a main course. The community has allocated a patch of green in the central garden for the children of the school to carry out activities of protecting green lawn. The community has set the end of a month as the "community clean-up day". On the day, the community working personnel and all the residents would turn out to clean the streets and lawns.

 The community has organized three games associated with the protection of nature, animals and environment. The community has made it a point of inviting experts to give lectures on environmental protection and green consumption every quarter. Here, even a small child could tell you that used battery cannot be disposed freely together with other refuses, as it would pollute the environment.

 In July 2006, Sino-Ocean Land Holdings Limited joined the "Going Green" program of the Enjili community. It has helped the community planting local plants, use water efficiently and the collection and utilization of renewable resources.

The company helped the community design a botanical garden in an open triangle area of the community. It used the existing tall and mature trees as the background and transplanted all the existing small-leaf box green hedgerows. In the garden, the walkways were paved with stone slabs and flowers with different flowering periods, mainly Chinese rose, were planted. By the inlet, a small sight-view platform was put up. 

Now different green patches have been linked; trees line the roads and walkways; there are flowers to appreciate in three of the four seasons. The community looks green all year round.

We owe the success of our "going green" program to socially responsible Chinese and foreign firms and to all the community members, who are united to make the environment clean and tidy and the community more livable, said Liu Qi, head of the Residents Committee of the Enjili Community.