Introduction
Project Bangku is a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) campaign by Alpro Foundation ( A subsidiary of Alpro Pharmacy), where Alproeans are realizing the idea of upcycling the wooden pallet and make it as a bench for the customer to sit while they are queueing at the outlets due to the restriction of social distancing.

Why Wooden Pallet?
The cause of this project started from the social issues of pandemic towards the increase demand in pallets. There are roughly 5 billion pallets in use worldwide, and an estimated 2 billion in the U.S. Alone.

Five hundred and thirteen million new wooden ones are built in the U.S.

With the increasing number of Covid- 19 cases every day, many people are now relying on online shopping to get their daily needs. That means supply chain and warehouses will use more wooden pallets to transport goods. According to the news from Bloomberg BusinessWeek, an estimate of 12 million tons of wood are sent to landfills every year. It is estimated that wooden pallets made up 90% of it.

Little that we know, all wooden pallets are made out of nails, chemical paints. When the wooden pallets are sent to landfills, there are being exposed to rain outdoor. Wooden corrosion will cause huge issues like termite encroachment to the environment. We see a parallel impact of the increase of economy and wooden pallet waste.

Hence, Alpro Foundation thought of why not change waste into something useful again?

Why Benches / Bangku ?
With the concept of upcycling, the idea of making BANGKUs came into the picture. Besides online shopping, the number of walk-ins into our pharmacies has also increased when more and more people are feeling ills due to the covid cases. With the limitation of social distancing, many customers are required to queue outside the premise, especially on peak day. Most of the frequent visitors are elderly or pregnant ladies. Thus, we would like to create convenience for them with a BANGKU at the kaki lima of our outlets.

By Upcycling the wooden pallets, we just need to do minimum modifications and a new benches are made. We believe that protecting the environment, it makes our earth a more sustainable place to live.

What is the obstacle we are facing?
The challenge we are facing right now is most of the benches are ready to be placed at the location, however, we have not received approval from the city council a.k.a Majlis perbandaran from different states to perform this placement.  

How to join us?
We believe that this is Project Bangku is the right thing to do and we urge the public to support us by placing your signature on this petition.

Let’s do it and help let others join us.
Share our petition and hashtag #isupportProjectBangku

Watch the video behind the scene here: � https://youtu.be/Oaz9o4uXlac