The report “Responsible Business in Poland. Good Practices” was prepared for the 17th time by the Corporate Social Responsibility Forum and contains a summary of last year’s activity of Polish companies in the field of CSR. The report distinguishes five projects pursued by the JSW Group. Each of them is of major social significance. 

“Preparation of urban and municipal guards to examine furnace ash” is a project conducted by the Central Measuring and Research Laboratory and is related to the improvement of health and life quality. Although the JSW Group is not a major player in the coal market for retail customers, it recognizes the importance of the quality of the air and contributes to its improvement by limiting pathological phenomena. This issue is related to another project also recognized in the report: “Varmo – new generation fuel” conducted by JSW Innowacje. Modern, composite solid fuel, whose production is based, among others, on the use of flotation concentrates, is designed to be used in modern boilers with automatic fuel supply. The fuel obtained as a result has combustion purity parameters that exceed competitor coal fuels, and that has significant importance in the fight for an improved quality of the air.

Another example of good practices described in the report is the ”Innovative project with the involvement of school students” conducted by JSW and JSK, which serves to improve the quality of education and innovation. Jastrzębska Spółka Kolejowa faced the need to develop an application aimed at improving railway transport security and increasing supervision over the condition of railway infrastructure. However, the company decided not to hire a specialized firm, opting instead for cooperation with the Technical Secondary School no. 4 in the School Complex no. 6 in Jastrzębie-Zdrój. Employees of the company developed elements of the system and the students of the Technical Secondary School completed the technical and IT part. The company developed its own solution without the need to use the expertise of third party firms; the students gained practical skills and experience. Nut this is not the end of the cooperation with schools. The good practices described in the report also include the project “Social Investments – cooperation with local schools” related to, among other things, social involvement and local community development. JSW SA concluded cooperation agreements with local governments, which are the governing bodies of schools offering vocational education in mining occupations, and the management board of the company approved a grant program. Its purposes is to encourage young people to study in mining profile classes, and in the future to work in JSW mines.

The last project described in the report is “Dębieńsko Salt – respect for resources”, conducted by Przedsiębiorstwo Gospodarki Wodnej i Rekultywacji S.A. – a company from the JSW Group. Its purposes is clean water, which is strictly linked to responsible consumption and production. The PGWiR plant desalinates mining waters from KWK Budryk in multi-stage filtering. As a result of a series of chemical processes, kitchen and road salt is produced there, while the Bierawka river avoids pollution.

The report “Responsible Business in Poland 2018. Good Practices”, which includes all CSR projects of Jastrzębska Spółka Węglowa, confirms unequivocally that increasingly many companies implement and put into practice ideas concerning corporate social responsibly. Not without a reason – as the organizers of the overview stress – legal initiatives and regulations at international and national levels provide incentives to companies to be more active in the field of corporate social responsibly. CSR owes its intensive development also to the requirements set by business partners to provide information also about non-financial activity of companies, which is strictly linked for example to the reputation of a given company. CSR has also become a tool in the efforts to attract and retain employees.  All these issues are significant also from the point of view of JSW.