OREANDA-NEWS. The Yokohama Rubber Co., Ltd., announced that its holding company for Chinese operations, Yokohama Rubber (China) Co., Ltd., received the "Most Excellent Company Image Award" at the "2013 Beautiful China" awards ceremony held in Beijing on September 27. "Beautiful China" is an event held by 17 Chinese newspapers and web-based media outlets to encourage and recognize the environmental protection activities of individuals and companies as part of their efforts to fulfill their corporate social responsibility (CSR). This year's awards ceremony was the first of what is expected to be an annual event.

The event's highlights were introduced in some 50 media with representatives in attendance. Awards were presented to 100 companies, including 35 foreign companies, and to 38 individuals. Yokohama Rubber (China) was one of only two Japanese companies to receive the "Most Excellent Company Image Award."

Yokohama Rubber (China) received the award in recognition of its tree-planting activities and its contributions to regional projects by a Chinese environmental NGO. Yokohama Rubber (China) has been cooperating since 2011 with the Beijing SanSheng Environment and Development Research Institute in a project to promote sustainable economic growth and ecological preservation in Heyuan, a poor village in the Laojun Mountain Nature Reserve in Lijiang, Yunnan Province, China.

Heyuan is highly dependent on lumbering as the villagers' main source of income. Over the years, this economic activity has led to extensive damage to the area's natural resources and ecosystems. To reverse this process and help the villagers establish an economic system in which they can earn a living while preserving the natural ecosystem, Yokohama Rubber (China) has been actively supporting education and environmental protection activities in Heyuan since 2011. In addition to these efforts in Heyuan, the Yokohama Rubber Group has planted some 40,000 trees at Group production sites throughout China as part of the global Yokohama Forever Forest Project started in 2007.

Yokohama Rubber (China) Co., Ltd., was established in November 2005 in Shanghai as a holding company to oversee the Yokohama Rubber Group's tire and multiple-business (MB) operations in China. In keeping with its basic policy to "assert world-class strengths in technologies for protecting the environment," as stated in its "Medium-range Management Plan: Grand Design 100 (GD100)," the Yokohama Rubber Group is actively engaged in activities that contribute to the environmentally sound development of local communities in China.