Corporate responsibility | Sands China partners WWF for environmental initiatives

Sands China and World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) have joined forces to reduce environmental impact, launching WWF’s Earth Hour “Just One” Hotels Programme this June as part of a three-year partnership.

At a press conference last week in Sands Cotai Central, the organizations said the program will enable guests to play a part in tackling climate change.

Guests have the option to add USD1 to their bill for every night spent at The Venetian Macao and The Parisian Macao.

The collected funds from the 6,000 guest rooms will go toward supporting two initiatives: the “WWF-China Biomass Fuel Stove Project” and WWF’s Earth House “Just One” Hotels Program, which aims to raise regional awareness of environmental sustainability through the distribution of “Earth Hour Home LED Kits”.

The “WWF-China Biomass Fuel Stove Project” will impact at least 1,000 families in several mainland Chinese villages, where coal is the primary source of fuel for cooking.

“It’s a question of identifying projects that are climate related and identifying a project where we’ll see direct tangible impact with a certain timeframe,” Sudhanshu Sarronwala, executive director of Communications & Marketing of WWF International, told the Times.

This project, under Sands ECO360°, was nearly three years in development.

According to Sarronwala, both parties had to complete significant due diligence to understand the needs of, and how to work with, the local community.

As the majority of Macau’s hotel guests hail from mainland China, Sands China and WWF emphasized the importance of Sands China properties in providing a platform for guests to help combat climate change at home.

Sarronwala explained that the initiative would play a vital role in “putting an end to the smog and haze resulting from field and burning in Jilin province’s corn belt, by promoting corn stalk as a viable biomass energy source and encouraging local communities to use biomass fuel stoves.”

He added that Sands China’s large-scale hotels would serve as a useful platform for such environmental efforts.

“This kind of scale – you can only get it in Macau with one or two properties. Because you don’t have many 3,000 room hotels in the world [and] it happens to be here,” he added.

Meanwhile, WWF’s Earth House “Just One” Hotels Program will deliver some 5,000 “Earth House Home LED Kits” to several local schools for distribution to  students and parents.

Each kit includes relevant information for families to switch to energy-efficient lighting and for participation in Earth Hour.

The kit also includes energy-efficient LED light bulbs, an Earth Hour t-shirt, a card kit and a reusable cloth bag.

WWF’s partnership with Sands China marks the debut of the “Just One” Hotels Program in Greater China. Organizers expressed their hopes that the program would raise citizens’ awareness of environmental initiatives.

“We’re hoping that the program’s concept is a concept that guests really get connected with and understand where the money is going,” Sarronwala concluded.