ESG management fever is brewing in the Korean pharmaceutical industry, which has been one of the nation’s most conservative industries.

Dong-A Socio Holdings, the holding company of Dong-A Pharmaceutical, is accelerating ESG management to be a trendsetter. 

 Starting with the publication of “Gamasot,” a groupwide report designed to unveil corporate business performances in a transparent fashion, Dong-A Socio Holdings is conducting a variety of ESG management activities. Those include the replacement of company cars with eco-friendly vehicles.

Industry sources said Dong-A Socio Holdings, the holding company of Dong-A Pharmaceutical, is stepping on the gas to spearhead ESG management.

Dong-A Socio Group, which has set corporate social responsibility as a major management tenet, has been expanding sustainable management.

First of all, Dong-A Socio Holdings began to release GAMASOT, a group integrated report, in June.

The report is designed to make the group’s financial and non-financial outcomes and efforts to carry out social responsibility activities.

The group’s integrated report, the second rendition this year, contains the group’s management tenets, major achievements, activities related to corporate social values, and each subsidiary’s outcomes and plans.

It also carries outcomes of eco-friendly activities, such as social responsibility management activities on an ESG perspective, a “plastic zero” campaign, and greenhouse gas inventory buildup.

Earlier, Dong-A Socio Group announced a plan to replace all office cars with eco-friendly vehicles to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Dong-A Pharmaceutical, Dong-A ST, Dong-A Otsuka, and Yongma Logis have joined forces in replacing office cars with eco-friendly vehicles according to annual replacement periods.

Yongma Logis struck an MOU on the retrieving of medical product wastes in cooperation with the Korea Pharmaceutical Association (KPA) on Oct. 5.

Under the agreement, Dong-A Pharmaceutical is responsible for offering retrieval boxes and related products as well as administrative support to smooth out the project along with local government bodies and regional KPA branches.

Yongma Logis is charged with collecting and keeping medical wastes from pharmacies through consultations with local government bodies and regional KPA branches before delivering them to incinerators.

KPA will be charged with conducting publicity activities like encouraging pharmacists through regional KPA branches in order to retrieve medical product wastes from home.

Dong-A Pharmaceutical delivered Bacchus plastic envelopers to retrieve wastes to pharmacies to make a patch for the product between 1991 and 2020. Paper envelops have been replaced with eco-friendly recycled papers since July 2020.

Dong-A Pharmaceutical’s children health functional food brand MINIMAX Jungle has obtained a green technology certificate for using eco-friendly packages.

A band attached to the container of the MINIMAX Jungle products is made with sugar cane, a non-timber paper in a format of “earth pack.”

Dong-A Socio Holdings inaugurated a principle management team in charge of spreading and settling principle management in 2018. The group launched a social responsibility consultation committee consisting of CEOs of subsidiaries last year.

Dong-A Socio Holdings Senior Executive Vice President Chung Jae-hoon stressed his resolution about anti-corruption while delivering a speech at a CEOs’ meeting this year.

He noted that integrity should be established as a value to be implemented on a voluntary basis, not a means to avoid outside punishment.

“Now is a time when priority is given to ESG management, taking into account not only each company’s inside management, but also outside stakeholders,” a business source said.

Each industry has an ESG trendsetter, but in the pharmaceutical industry, Dong-A Pharmaceutical is spearheading the implementation of ESG management, the source said.