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Back to the Environmental Approach Page
Waste
What is the challenge?
The large majority of wastes generated globally are disposed of in landfill sites, without any pre-treatment. Not only is waste an inefficient use of resources, but it is also related with some of the potentially harmful environmental aspects such as: emissions to air (releasing methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2)), odours and bio aerosols, and emissions to soil and water (leaching pollutants) by point source and diffuse pollution.
Much of the waste disposed of in landfill can in fact be reused or recycled, thereby reducing the waste disposal area and related environment impacts, as well as reducing the need to consume more resources, namely land resource where wastes are disposed of.
To close the resource efficiency loop, it is also important to ensure that materials and goods procured are from sustainable sources, and contain significant proportions of recycled materials.
Waste management is a significant challenge for the construction industry, and also is one of the principal environmental impacts of retailers who produce large amounts of packaging waste.
Good waste management follows the principles of a hierarchy: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and then dispose of in the less environmentally sensitive manner.
What is Sonae Sierra doing about it?
DEVELOPMENT
Waste management
The ESRD includes a series of design requirements to maximise the potential for waste sorting, so that it can be sent off for recycling and reuse in centres under operation. A site specific “Waste strategy study” is undertaken to establish adequate provision of space for waste segregation bins and compactors. It also considers separate storage facilities to allow the temporary sorting and storage of recyclable materials generated by the centre's tenants.
Sonae Sierra takes a progressive approach to waste management during construction works, encouraging contractors to operate “Waste management plans”. Besides the difficulty that arises from the fact that during the construction process the environmental impacts are directly controlled by the construction companies, Sonae Sierra is committed to facilitate the designing-out of waste produced during construction (such as off-site pre-fabrication). Where possible, we specify end of life recycling for building components, which is particularly relevant for our refurbishment activities. In addition, the construction companies are required to report back to us the results of their waste management.
MANAGEMENT
Waste production
The quantity of waste handled by Sonae Sierra is largely a function of tenants’ activities and packaging policies in particular. The company provides a lot of help and encouragement to tenants to separate waste by type and to increase the proportion of waste which is recovered.
Beyond seeking to influence tenants’ practices, there is little that we can do to reduce the waste produced in our shopping centres as very little of this falls within our direct control.
We annually reinforce the service suppliers and tenants’ awareness, giving them specific training to achieve ever-increasing recovery rates in each shopping centre.
Waste management
The bulk of Sonae Sierra’s efforts related to waste management are focused upon the way in which it is segregated, managed and disposed, in order to achieve as a minimum all the legal requirements and also a progressive recovery waste rate.
We have been measuring, monitoring and targeting waste management and recycling rates in our shopping centres since 2002. The data collection and monitoring function is achieved through a centralised online working database which allows centre management teams to input environmental performance data of individual centres, and to generate reports on waste recycling rates comparing these across the Sonae Sierra’s portfolio. This information is used to set annual targets to increase the proportions of waste sent for recycling or reclaimed (by weight) across our centres.
Over the past 7 years, we have successfully achieved significant reductions in the amount of waste we send to landfill. This is largely due to our efforts to increase recycling rates by finding new opportunities for waste recycling and carrying out awareness-raising and training activities among our staff, tenants and service suppliers. We have set ourselves the long term objectives to attain a minimum 50% recycling rate and a maximum 30% landfill rate. In order to achieve these goals, we will focus on seeking new ways to increase our recycling rates and reduce waste sent to landfill by continuing to review options such as composting at sites where this is not yet possible and the availability of facilities that enable energy recovery from waste.
Sonae Sierra KPIs
Sonae Sierra has chosen both waste recycling rate (%) and the proportion of waste sent to landfill (%) as KPIs, and also other complementary indicators, to measure our performance under this subject.
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