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New Chairman Looks to Ecology as He Heads Taiwan Lighting Association
2007/05/28
President C.L. Wu of Yuieh Hsene Electronics Co., Ltd. was elected the seventh chairman of the Taiwan Lighting Fixture Export Association in March this year. The new chairman pledges to make health, profession, and sustainable development, underpinned by the virtues of eco-consciousness, the core of his policy-making over the three-year term.
 | | Chairman Wu of the Taiwan Lighting Fixture Export Association. |
A die-hard preacher of the importance of physical and mental health in entrepreneurship, Wu now tries to work such key notions into the Association`s policies as he has his hands on the reins of the export trade group.
"Only physically and mentally healthy entrepreneurs can hope to build appealing, wholesome corporate images, and only such corporations can attract consumers. From the viewpoint of the lighting industry, a health-conscious product is one that saves energy and plays a part in eco-protection," he stresses.
Wu also practices what he preaches-trying to produce a line of eco-sensitive items in his company. "Yuieh Hsene specializes in energy-saving lamps that not only help consumers cut power usage but also remind them of the importance of such virtue," he says.
Chairman Wu adds that healthy minds and bodies enable entrepreneurs to make the most of given intellectual capacities-finding find new opportunities, technologies and perspectives-that protect businesspeople from being backed into dead-ends and corners. "For instance, Yuieh Hsene recently rolled out a lamp called "eco-lasting lamp" for its green and power-conservation merits, which address environmental issues like global warming, carbon-dioxide emissions regulated by the 1997 Tokyo Protocol and various European environmental directives. Such product shows that we are seriously eco-conscious," Wu says.
Wu claims that the "eco-lasting lamp" is harmless to the environment and more energy-efficient than fluorescent lamps. "Eco-lasting lamps" generate 80 lumens per watt compared with fluorescent lamp`s 50-55 lumens," Wu reports. He explains that the eco-lasting lamp uses magnet-energy technology instead of conventional electrodes or filaments to generate light.
Regarding sustainable development, Wu stresses that such goal can only be achieved in living environments when lights are effective energy savers and eco-protectors. He notes that the European Union and Australian government are determined to begin in 2010 gradually prohibiting the use of incandescent bulbs, while the retail giant Wal-Mart will no longer sell the finger-burning bulbs. "In the meantime, the world lighting industry has a new challenge," he says.
"To highlight the sustainable development notion, the Association will serve its members with a more flexible organizational structure," Wu stresses. And he will install functional and affairs committees, with the former made up of committees for lighting certification, lighting technology, optoelectronics technology, industrial policy promotion and international affair; while the latter is composed of committees for communications, training and education, association-affair development and overseas members. "With committees designed for more specific functions, I am confident that the association will better serve its members," Wu says.
On the major tasks of such committees, Wu says briefly that the industrial policy promotion committee will propose suggestions to the government. "We will suggest to the government to emulate many Western counterparts-collecting environmental-protection tax on lighting from consumers by adding such tax to retail prices as it begins implementing such system by July 1 this year. Such a system would prompt consumers to take spent lamps to reclamation points, where the pre-paid deposits are refunded upon purchase," he says.
The key task for the optoelectronics committee, Wu notes, is narrowing the knowledge gap between lighting manufacturers and LED makers regarding LED lighting. He emphasizes that the two sides still differ greatly as LEDs become more popular, causing differences in LED lighting design adopted by the two makers. "The major differences exist in the measurement terminologies used by the two makers. For instance, lighting makers use "lx" whereas LED makers use "cd." And LEDs are only near-proximity effective, resulting in the joke that a LED lights up all within a meter but nil beyond that. Lighting makers need to know these problems," Wu says.
Another key task for the certification committee of the Association is to set up a qualification-approval system, with most of the island`s lighting makers being eager to do the same. Wu notes that "since the government is reluctant to set up such a system, the Association has no choice but to do the job and examine products on its own, with such system going a long way to reduce "quality-paranoia" or distrust in the quality of lights. We plan to label quality-approved products with the "TLA" mark or "Taiwan Lamp Approval," Wu says.
The lighting-technology committee, Wu says, has the main task of working with Taiwan`s academic circles, technology developers and research institutes and official organizations to trouble-shoot technological difficulties for lighting makers. Another major task is developing shared technological parameters based on Taiwan`s Chinese National Standards (CNS) for lighting makers.
The Association`s international-affairs committee, Wu says, will mostly plan, organize overseas trade fairs to be attended by its membership, as well as promote the Association overseas. When asked if the Association will continue organizing a lighting fair promoting Taiwanese lighting makers as it has done over the past few years in Shenzhen, he says "the issue is open to discussion." But he stresses that the location of fairs is irrelevant as exploring business opportunities for domestic makers is the top priority.
Finally, Wu thinks that the major obstacle for Taiwanese lighting makers is they fail to go beyond themselves and can compete price-wise against rivals. "Domestic makers should look beyond, predict future trends, and design to meet the needs of tomorrow. I would say eco-sensitivity and energy efficiency are absolutely the trends. Instead of convincing lighting makers solely on the virtue of power-saving products, I would try to have them associate eco-protection and energy conservation with healthier living," he concludes.
(by Ken Liu)
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