CapitaLand promotes Earth Hour awareness at residences around the world
This year, over 280 CapitaLand properties around the world, including all 34 CapitaLand properties in Singapore, participated in the global World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Earth Hour movement, which officially kicked off on 25 March 2017 at 8.30 pm local time.
“Climate change is one of the key challenges of our time, and CapitaLand is making a concerted effort to engage with the community on sustainability-related issues and rally our stakeholders to #ChangeClimateChange through small, everyday changes to the way we live, work and play,” said Tan Seng Chai, group chief corporate officer of CapitaLand and chairman of CapitaLand’s sustainability steering committee.
“CapitaLand has participated in Earth Hour every year since the movement came to Singapore in 2008. To mark our 10th year of supporting Earth Hour, we are leveraging our offline and online assets to create the platforms for empowering our stakeholders with the tools and knowledge to lead a greener sustainable lifestyle,” he added.
To broaden its Earth Hour campaign globally, over 50 CapitaLand malls across Singapore, China, Malaysia, Japan and India organised a series of cycling-related activities.
The aim is to promote the adoption of carbon-lite modes of transportation, by encouraging shoppers in participating malls to cycle a total distance of 40,075 kilometres, equivalent to Earth’s equatorial circumference.
In Vietnam, CapitaLand organised a series of green activities in the week leading up to Earth Hour, beginning with the planting of 20 trees in the Binh Chau Phuoc Buu nature reserve and culminating in a green festival on the day of Earth Hour at the Oxygen mall, a three-storey shopping mall developed by CapitaLand in the heart of Ho Chi Minh City District 2.
Activities at the green festival included a collection drive for used plastic bottles and paper cups, and a craft workshop for children using these collected materials.
Shoppers donated used books in exchange for small pots of plants, with these curated books benefiting underprivileged pupils studying in three CapitaLand Hope Schools in Vietnam.
For its sustainability efforts, CapitaLand was this year listed in The Sustainability Yearbook 2017 with a Silver Class Sustainability Award, placing it in the top three among real estate companies worldwide and making it the only Singaporean company with such a distinction.
CapitaLand is also listed in the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index and Asia Pacific Index, Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark Report (Regional Sector Leader for Asia, Diversified), FTSE4Good Index Series, MSCI Global Sustainability Indices, STOXX® Global ESG Leaders Indices, Singapore Exchange Sustainability Indices and Channel NewsAsia Sustainability Ranking.