Sri Lanka-based tire manufacturer GRI has planted 450 rubber trees in the natural rubber estates of smallholder farmers in Monaragala, Sri Lanka, through its ‘Greening Our Planet’ program, a component of the tire maker’s Green X Circle initiative.
“Our initial phase was about constructing a strong foundation with the natural rubber farmer in Sri Lanka and connecting with their communities,” commented Mahesha Ranasoma, CEO, GRI. “The broad concept of the Green X Circle is creating an interdependent truly end-to-end supply chain from the rubber tree and the rubber farmer to the agricultural farmer who uses GRI’s Green X and Green XLR agriculture tires globally, which are manufactured using the rubber produced by the farmer.”
Launched in 2019 at the Agritechnica show in Germany, the Green X Circle is a social leadership initiative that aims to combine the two farmer ecosystems while helping the farming communities to become more sustainable through revising their actions. With activities designed to strengthen the Sri Lankan natural rubber farmer connection accelerating, GRI has initiated the second phase of the Green X Circle project.
“We are connecting globally with our business partners who are serving the agricultural farmers in their respective markets through a tree-planting program under the theme Greening Our Planet,” explained Ranasoma. “This is an important step for us.”
Following support and sponsorship from international GRI customers, the tire manufacturer achieved a company milestone by launching the tree-planting program.
“We will augment the efforts of this initiative across our global markets by jointly working with our customers to conduct similar programs in their respective countries with the farmers as the next step. We will keep this momentum in implementing further projects to enable sustainability,” said Ranasoma.
