„Improving my own factory in terms of waste is not enough. How can I make a bigger difference?” – how a successful entrepreneur cleans up dirty oil and why, through different business associations, he convinces others that environmental investments pay.

Daniel M. Cheng, Managing Director, Dunwell Group, Hong Kong, P. R. China

Daniel Cheng is a smart, creative, dynamic, hard working and a very successful entrepreneur. He helped his father develop the family business into one of the world’s lar-gest suppliers of compo-nents for VCR tapes. Since he fell in love with the spa-cious plant of a bankrupt waste oil treatment enter-prise in Hong Kong, he took it over and within few years developed it into a flouri-shing, environmental role-model enterprise. – “Quite an achievement for a guy who financed his college in the USA by cleaning streets to setting up two business before gra-duation,” Daniel Cheng said with a smile, showing us around his plant in Hong Kong with pride.
Mr. Cheng likes challenges and thinks there is a great deal of contribution that can and should be done by enterprises to improve the condition of the environment we all live in. Except demonstrating the possibilities within his own enter-prise, Daniel Cheng is engaged in a number of business associations and charity organisations to leverage the impact he wants to make.

Enjoy reading some of his thoughts in the selected quo-tations below and you may be able to read more in our book “MyImpact”.

Daniel M. Cheng’s selected quotations:
“Everything I do, I do with passion. You cannot fake things.”

“When it comes to the environment the issue is quite straight forward: What kind of business do you want to do in 15 years if there is no environment to support you?”

“The reason why we are successful is because we put environment into everything we do.”

“People in China and Hong Kong are less sensitized to the environmental issues – I want to demonstrate that envi-ronmental investments pay.”

“The first thing I can do is of course in my own company. It’s about the right relationship with the employees, about waste treatment, energy usage and most importantly about sensibility and commitment. But improving my own factory in terms of waste is not enough. How can I make a bigger difference?”

“I organize some charity activities regularly, e.g. a golf tournament. It is rewarding to see that friends and busi-ness partners trust me and give me money to place in good charity projects to support.”

“We have this 1-1-1 project designed for companies in the Pearl River Delta around Hong Kong. One company should have one ecological project in one year. This gets me excited – to contribute here, to influence companies to change things and to see how it scales and duplicates. That’s real impact.”

“After my company makes the next development step, I would like to focus on consulting young start-ups in the environmental area.”

“As an environmental service provider, we care about the community and our environment. Starting from our com-pany and our staff, we try to radiate our commitment to our clients, our partners as well as the public - and to influence them.”

“CSR practices definitely put Dunwell ahead of other SMEs. Internally, our staff is happier and more willing to commit at their work. Externally, we have closer contact with the community and know our market better. We also rise to fame as a responsible, good-hearted company. We are then recognized by our business partners and clients and our business increases as a result.”

Some background on Daniel M. Cheng:
Born and raised in a small enterprise family in Hong Kong, Mr. Daniel Cheng left at the age of 15 to continue his education in Los Angeles. Being suddenly on his own, Daniel was not only confronted with cultural chal-lenges, but also worked hard to earn his living with odd jobs in parallel to studying. After gra-duation as an Industrial Engineer from the California State Polytechnic University, he started to work for Bell & Howell. After one year he was offered to head the department of Industrial Operations at Tidi Pro-ducts, Inc. and, unexpectedly for the employer, young Mr. Cheng successfully turned around the department within 13 months, improving its performance and gaining respect of the often much older employees. That’s when he left the US to assist his family and their business because of his father’s health problems. From 1983 on, Daniel helped his father to refocus the company and grow it from 5 em-ployees to the world leader in production of video tape guides and pins. In the course of the years, under his management the Dunwell Group expanded into new business areas and Daniel himself started receiving many industry and environmental awards, e.g. Best Managed SME Gold Award in Hong Kong, and being asked to join, advice and head organizations and committees, e.g. Chairman of “Friends of the Earth”, Advisory Council on the Environment to the Hong Kong Government.

Some background on Dunwell Group:
Ever since the foundation in 1969 by the Chairman Mr. Chow Cheng, Daniel M. Cheng’s father, Dunwell’s name has come to stand for advanced technology, high quality and excellent customer services. From a small machinery trading company with a handful of staff it grew to a multi-faceted corporation of over 100 employees. Dunwell has captured the booming of Hong Kong's economy.
Today, Dunwell's business covers used oil and solvent re-refinery, manufacturing, trading and marketing of lubri-cants, environmental-related technologies, precision metal components, industrial equipment, lubricating oil analysis services, and specialty chemicals.
Dunwell Environmental Management Co Ltd was first ini-tiated in 1993. Its main focus has been the col-lection and handling of used lubricating oil and oil-contaminated waste-water. In 1994, Dunwell Environmental Manage-ment (DEM) Co., Ltd. has received the Grand Award - the Diamond Award for the 1st SME Living Business Awards, organized by HSBC. DEM is one of the subsidiaries of Dunwell Group providing a wide range of environmental services such as waste oil & wastewater collection, one stop chemical waste handling to local clients. Dunwell is now moving into the recycling business. It is the vision of Dunwell Enviro-Tech to become the leading environmental enterprise within the Asia Pacific Region.

Some background on the 1-1-1 Initiative:
In his function as Chairman of the Environmental Industry Group of Federations of Hong Kong Industries, Mr. Cheng launched his latest environmental initiative in March 2005, the “One Factory – One Year – One Environmental Pro-ject” (1-1-1), which is intended to increase the environ-mental awareness of the appx. 80.000 Hong Kong owned manufacturing companies in Guangdong (mainland China).
1-1-1 is the most important and largest scale voluntary environmental initiative by the industries to roll back the pollutions in the Pearl River Delta Region that may have been created by the overwhelming development in the last 20 years that led to increasingly polluted air and wa-ter in China and Hong Kong.
It starts with each 1-1-1 member’s factory to initiate a green project each year. Taking into consideration the amount of involved companies this 1-1-1 program will bring an enormous and positive impact for the environ-ment. Companies which participate in the program will be-nefit from environmental trainings, see eventual returns in their efforts through better pollution control, cost savings in energy and material, improving corporate images and consumers’ loyalty in their products.

If you would like to engage with the work of Daniel M. Cheng and the Dunwell Group or get to know more about them please visit www.dunwellgroup.com,

or, for more specific opportunities, contact joanna.stefanska@myimpact.ch or wolfgang.hafenmayer@myimpact.ch directly.