Besides giving out a reusable bag to every employee, the company is also placing additional reusable bags at the main doorways of its offices, making them convenient to be picked up by employees who plan to go shopping during lunch breaks or after work.  

The initiative was launched at LANXESS’s offices in Singapore, China, India, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Australia and Vietnam on 5 June 2008, in conjunction with World Environment Day.  To celebrate the occasion, many employees came to work dressed in green.   Employees also signed their commitment to protect the environment on a pledge board which will be displayed in the offices.

Singapore Environment Council's General Manager, Mr Yatin Premchand said, "It is certainly encouraging to see that LANXESS is supporting the Bring Your Own Bag campaign. We hope that more companies will take the initiative to implement similar environmental programmes as it will definitely help to spread the message to consumers to be mindful of the environment while on their shopping trips."

Mr. Ian Wood, Managing Director of LANXESS Pte Ltd, said, “Our objective is to make it easy for employees to choose and use reusable bags, whenever possible, by putting them right before their eyes.”

Reusable Bags, a US-based environmental group, estimates that some 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed each year on a worldwide basis. That works out to over one million plastic bags being used per minute.

In Singapore, about 2.5 billion plastic bags are consumed in a year or the equivalent of 625 bags per person per annum.