Lisboa, 16-1-2007
Three more centres certified
Sonae Sierra reinforces environmental certification
Five shopping centres in Portugal and three in Spain were certified by the ISO 14001 standard
It's Sonae Sierra's purpose to environmentally certify, by the end of 2008, all of its shopping and leisure centres under operation
Sonae Sierra, the first company in the shopping centre business to obtain, at an international level, certification for its Environmental Management System (EMS), in conformity with the ISO 14001 standard, has just increased its number of shopping centres with environmental certification, issued by the prestigious Lloyd´s Register Quality Assurance (LRQA), the only certification company in the world licensed to operate in all industrial sectors.
Pursuing its strategic goal of obtaining environmental certification, by the end of 2008, for all its shopping and leisure centres under operation, Sonae Sierra has just obtained certification under the ISO 14001 standard for the Plaza Mayor, Avenida M-40 and Luz del Tajo centres, all in Spain, and for Estação Viana, ViaCatarina, Centro Vasco da Gama, AlgarveShopping and Parque Atlântico, all in Portugal, which now join two Portuguese centres already certified: Centro Colombo and NorteShopping.
With this certification, Sonae Sierra's shopping and leisure centres are now acknowledged to abide to the most demanding levels of environmental management in vital areas such as energy savings, water quality and consumption, the monitoring of air quality and the selective separation and recycling of waste materials.
According to Álvaro Portela, Sonae Sierra's CEO, "these certifications, issued by renowned specialists in the subject, represent the acknowledgement of the Company's great efforts in terms of environmental matters. They also confirm that our environmental policy makes us a reference company in the sector, allowing us to bet on a sustainable development of the Company".
A consistent policy
Sonae Sierra's Environmental Policy is, naturally, based on Sonae Group's philosophy, which has been defined by its President, Belmiro de Azevedo, in a framework of the promotion of Sustainable Development and the bet on environmental preservation as decisive assets for business success and the assertion of the Sonae Group in the community.
Sierra's Environmental Policy was approved in 1998 and reviewed in 2004, after a long trail that has its first decisive moment in 1997, with the beginning of the environmental diagnosis of shopping centres already under operation, through which the activity's main environmental impacts were identified.
To abide to the values and guidelines in its Environmental Policy, Sonae Sierra developed its Environmental Management System (EMS), certified in 2005 under the ISO 14001 standard, with the purpose of constantly improving the company's eco-efficiency, and managing in an environmentally correct manner the most significant potential negative impacts of its activity.
The Green Centres
Sonae Sierra's efforts in terms of environmental matters are put into practice, among many other aspects, in the "green centre" concept, developed by the company and first exemplified by NorteShopping, in Matosinhos, which had its EMS certified in 2005.
The "green centre" concept determines that Sonae Sierra's shopping and leisure centres are gifted, from the concept stage, with all the conditions to follow the guidelines of the company's Environmental Management System, optimizing aspects as important as landscape integration or the choice of construction materials, taking into account not only the local tradition, but also the conditions of the surrounding area, with thermal gains, for instance. These and other aspects allow for centres to be managed, from the concept stage, in an environmentally responsible manner, according to the standards of the Environmental Management System.
In practical terms, this strategy allows for the implementation of the best environmental practices in areas such as energy savings, the management of water quality and consumption, the monitoring of air quality, the selective separation and recycling of waste, among others, which results in significant savings in the development and management of its shopping centres. The optimization of water consumption is made possible, for example, through the intelligent system called BMS (Building Management System), which controls water consumption through sophisticated systems such as timers fitted to water taps and other equipments that allow for significant savings.
Besides the reduction of resource consumption, Sonae Sierra also bets on guaranteeing the quality of the water provided to its centres' visitors, conducting systematic analysis in suitably licensed laboratories.
In terms of waste, the centres owned by Sonae Sierra feature the most modern equipments, which allow them to make a selective separation of waste, to be later sent to recycling. In terms of liquid effluents, the pre-treatment systems installed allow for a quality improvement before the discharge in the city collection system.
The quality of the air indoors is, in its turn, ensured by ventilation and air conditioning systems, which are the object of rigorous maintenance programs and regularly inspected so as to confirm their efficiency. All theses systems and equipments are regularly evaluated through external audits, which assess the effectiveness of the procedures.
Sonae Sierra, www.sonaesierra.com, is an international shopping centre specialist, with a passion for bringing innovation and excitement to the shopping and leisure centre industry. The Company owns or co-owns 41 Shopping Centres in Portugal, Spain, Italy, Germany, Greece and Brazil, with a total Gross Lettable Area (GLA) of more than 1,6 million m2. Currently, Sonae Sierra is developing 14 more projects in Portugal, Spain, Italy, Germany, Greece and Brazil, with a total GLA of more than 500.000 m2. In 2005 its centres have welcomed more than 400 million visits.