BAGUIO CITY – The giant chain of malls continues to affirm its unrelenting and uncompromising commitment for the sustained efforts of both the public and private sectors in improving the state of the environment for the benefit of the present and future generations of Filipinos.
Karren Nobres, SM City Baguio public relations manager, said SM management has firmly committed to pursue operational sustainability interventions coupled with the education of the public as well as rolling out more projects geared towards the protection of the environment, especially with the celebration of Earth Day last Wednesday.
“SM remembers their commitment to their stakeholders on environmental performance, to ensure that we continue to grow in a way that is efficient and sustainable,” Nobres stressed.
For 2015, she disclosed SM will roll out a sustainability orientation for all employees to serve as an information awareness campaign for them to value the importance of individual and collective efforts to preserve and protect the environment from the bad practices of the people that tend to affect and contribute in the deterioration of the gifts of God to the people.
According to her, SM has also committed to business continuity planning which will be rolled out to all mall tenants and business partners for a bolder action towards improving efforts to contribute in environmental preservation and protection programs.
Earlier, SM initiated the program “Trash to Cash” recycling market, which is one of the widely celebrated environmental preservation and protection programs of the mall that is held every first Friday and Saturday of the month.
Under the program, people are allowed to exchange their recyclable materials for cash and other household items included in the recyclable materials that could be exchanged for cash and other household items are plastic and pet bottles, tin and aluminium cans, books, newspapers, scratch papers, furniture made of wood, metal cookwares and other kitchen items among others.
The SM City Baguio official disclosed the continuous implementation of the program resulted to the shelling out of over P47 million worth of goods to those individuals who were able to exchange their recyclable wastes with the mall.
On the other hand, SM Prime Holdings has continuously worked together with the Worldwide Fund for Nature, Philippines for its observance of Earth Hour every March 28 whereby all its mall nationwide shut off their lights to participate in the world’s largest celebration to raise awareness of the world’s environmental concerns.
Nobres disclosed SM management sought the opportunity to again bring to the forefront environmental issues by conducting the annual Green Retail Agenda.
She added the event is conducted for the network of SM Prime’s mall tenants, public and private sector business partners, to educate the audience on pressing environmental concerns and empower the people to actively participate in the snowballing efforts to sustain the implementation of environmental preservation and protection programs beneficial to the present and future generations.
By Dexter A. See
