Environment | Missing ‘infrastructure’ and ‘collaboration’ to turn green into gold

The lack of environmental infrastructure as well as insufficient collaboration between private companies and the government, were two of the main points of a talk held during the Green Business Co-operation Day of Macau International Environmental Co-operation Forum & Exhibition (MIECF), that closed on Saturday.
A panel debated the theme “Turning Green into Gold,” looking specifically at how the hospitality sector (one of the fastest growing sectors in many parts of the world) could minimize their currently significant impact on the environment by adopting sustainability practices and striving to reduce waste.
Syed Mubarak, Sands China’s director of sustainability commented that “Macau is small but has high visitation and all those people leave a large foot print. There is a long journey ahead.” He nominated water management as the most important point to start with, adding that “water and energy are very close together.” Mubarak noted that these sectors were relevant to air conditioning, as large quantities of water are required to cool the system.
Commenting on this issue, Daniel Cheng, managing director of Dunwell Enviro-tech (Holdings) Ltd, took the opportunity to introduce one of the firm’s most successful products, the “Biotoilet.”
According to Cheng, the system allows savings of about 15 percent every year but, on the down side, “needs to be planned at least 10 years in advance.” He stated that “now is really the time to think about what mainland China is doing through the initiative of president Xi Jinping which ordered that 17,000 self-s­ustainable toilets should be installed yearly in tourist locations throughout China.”
Representing the hospitality industry, Joshua Ho, vice president for Property Services of Melco Crown Entertainment Limited, said, “it is very important that the hospitality industry take responsibility,” giving the example of the “City of Dreams” development in which “we did that [take responsibility and action] and installed the dual piping system.” He added that what’s “more important” than individual actions are “global actions,” affirming that “Macau needs to have local treatment.”
Mubarak also pointed to the “lack of collaboration,” stating that “one hand doesn’t create sound, we need two hands for that.”
Another of the hospitality representatives, Rebecca Donnellan, Director of Sustainability of MGM, expressed the same view: “We need collaboration. That’s obvious!” She suggested that the solution may come in the form of a taxation of waste. “Maybe we need to get rid of the ‘waste’ word and put a value on it,” she said.
She also agreed with Joshua Ho about the requirement for local infrastructure to handle waste, recalling “in Hong Kong there is an EcoPark where people can do this. In Macau there is no space for recyclers.”
Another of the points which saw all members of the panel in agreement was the need to “get rid” of the word “waste” in relation to food, proposing instead the use of the word “excess.”