In 2018, over 250 colleagues cleaned the beach shores and underwater from debris, plastics and other waste in UAE, KSA, Kuwait and Bahrain. One hundred and ten of our colleagues planted 100 Ghaf trees, a drought-tolerant indigenous species, in UAE to raise awareness of the decline of the wild Ghaf as well as the importance of water conservation.
More than 1,000 of our font-line colleagues participated in Earth Hour by switching off the electricity for one hour. This took place in 235 of our stores across eight regions.
Our logistics teams in UAE did their part for the environment by collecting bottle caps for one month and creating two pieces of wall art as a communication tool to encourage our warehouse teams to segregate their waste for recycling. Because of campaigns like these, the warehouse buildings received a revenue from recyclables of $29,543, an increase of 15% from 2017.
As part of our initiative to reduce paper use within our operations, 140 of our UAE stores participated in a ‘Save Paper Day’ which was part of a wider Sustainability Week initiative held in all our UAE offices. The week focused on spreading knowledge of sustainability as well as the Group’s sustainability strategy. In 2019, we are planning to roll out Sustainability Week in 8 other regions where we operate to raise awareness on sustainability practices.