As many of you know, Yao Ming owns his old basketball team, the Shanghai MAXXIS Sharks. MAXXIS is a Chinese tire company that is obviously the team’s sponsor.

Earlier this week, Yao and MAXXIS announced the launch of a “Cheer for Earth” initiative to help reduce carbon emissions through fuel efficiency.

Because tire pressure has an impact on fuel efficiency, MAXXIS is offering free tire pressure checks and tire inflation at more than 1,000 stores throughout China in July and August. More than 150,000 customers have taken advantage of the promotion to date, saving an estimated 61,965 tons in carbon emissions.

Who said China doesn’t care about it’s carbon footprint? This MAXXIS initiative may be small in relation to all of the carbon that China emits, but at least it gives you a glimpse within the country that there is acknowledgment more needs to be done.

For more photos from the press conference, click here.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 19th, 2011 at 11:06 pm and is filed under China, Spokesperson. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.