Ricoh sponsors climate change project on Celsias website

Ricoh has become a Founding Corporate Sponsor of a climate change project on Celsias.com. Celsias claims to be the first online destination where people and companies can create, join or sponsor projects that combat global warming. Celsias.com, created in New Zealand, was recently named one of the top five climate change websites in the world by The Times newspaper in the UK. Ricoh has listed its beach clean-up and native bush planting project on Motuihe Island in Auckland's Hauraki Gulf, run by its New Zealand employees under its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programme on the Celsias website.   "We are thrilled to announce that Ricoh has joined the Celsias community. They have recognised that, by placing their CSR projects on the site, the knowledgeable Celsias community can be the judge of their merits. This will build greater trust for their company and its climate change activities," said Nick Lewis, CEO of Celsias. Lewis says Celsias is also talking to a number of other major global companies who want to list their CSR projects on the site. "Like Ricoh, companies need to have been recognized as taking an active role in climate change before we will let them on Celsias." Ricoh New Zealand's managing director, Mike Pollok, says his firm has been on the sustainability journey for about a decade. The company has a full time sustainability manager and is continually seeking ways to reduce and mitigate its environmental impacts. "Ricoh New Zealand has been involved on Motuihe Island since 2004 and seen some fantastic progress from our team's restoration efforts," said Mr Pollok. "It's great to be able to showcase this wonderful project to the world. Over the years, we've planted 6,900 seedlings on Motuihe Island. In fact, our team calls our area the Ricoh Valley because we're really starting to transform the place now. We get a real buzz out of what we're collectively achieving on the Island." Celsias expects the corporate market to find Celsias compelling. "Companies of all sizes can raise the visibility of their corporate social responsibility projects to a wider community," says Lewis. Founded in 2006, Celsias (www.celsias.com) aims to help ordinary people do extraordinary things, by creating, joining and sponsoring climate change projects. The company says that web traffic to Celsias.com grew at a compound growth rate of 65% per month during its first fourteen months of operation. E&OE