Ayala boosts green campaign with awareness exhibit, forum

CEBU, Philippines - Ayala Center Cebu (ACC) intensifies its campaign to encourage retailers and customers to implement a sustainable green practice by holding an exhibit and forum dubbed “Go Green: The Eco-friendly Selling.”

While the mall cannot impose a compulsory program to require all tenants to employ an environmentally-friendly operation inside the mall, including the use of recyclable shopping bags, reduced energy consumption, and others, ACC has decided to provide an educational and awareness campaign to heighten the “green retailing” campaign of the mall, in partnership with the Philippine Retailers Association (PRA-Cebu).

“We hope to encourage our tenants to buy the concept of our sustainability effort and the green retailing,” said ACC division head Joy Polloso.

Polloso said ACC would also help tenants/retailers to learn from the experts on how to successfully run a “green retail” operation.

Scheduled on March 23 (2010) at the ACC Active Zone area, the forum coincides with PRA-Cebu’s general membership meeting and gathers some 100 of Cebuano retailers.

This event also provides opportunity to formally introduce to PRA-Cebu members the thrust of the industry’s “Go Green”, starting with the Every Bag Counts (EBC) campaign and encourage them to adopt sustainability practices into their respective business, Polloso said in a press conference yesterday.

Industry share makers will share their stories on how it can be done, along with a sharing on best practices and government’s role in presenting sustainability programs and laws.

The Go Green Forum and Exhibit is spearheaded by ACC, following the direction of the Ayala Malls Greenology awareness campaign, which heed’s the world’s call for sustainability.

“The mall now goes beyond being a venue for leisure and relaxation and has taken active role in bringing the sustainable lifestyle to the shoppers through events such as the ‘Go Green’ forum,” Polloso said.          

ACC has already been implementing its environment sustainability practice, through garbage segregation, reduced energy consumption. This time, it has moved on encouraging retailers or tenants to seriously adopt environmentally-friendly operations, and giving-out recyclable shopping bags to shoppers is a good start, Polloso said.

Meanwhile, ACC also announced its active participation to the Earth Hour 2010 as it joins the global community in the campaign for a sustainable future.

To be held on March 27 at exactly 8:30 in the evening, ACC hopes to invite other companies and even individuals to swift-off their electricity for one-hour.

Last year, ACC saved over 2,000kw of electricity equivalent to 395 kg of carbon dioxide-less emission to the environment.