We are extremely proud to have been awarded LEED Gold certification for Existing Buildings: Operations and Maintenance (LEED EBOM) for the ongoing operations and maintenance of our Head Quarters in Jebel Ali. In addition to improving the operational activities across the business, LEED EBOM also recognises the value of human capital and considers the importance of employee wellbeing as a critical success factor to achieving excellence in sustainability.
For us, going beyond our LEED gold interior certification and achieving LEED EBOM was the next step on our ongoing CSR journey. Not only has this process helped us to take a step closer to achieving our goal to become carbon neutral by 2020, but has also maximised the investment into our facility by operating it efficiently and correctly maintaining it.
Over the past 3 years, we have been recording and measuring our energy and water consumption and working hard to implement measures to reduce these. We are pleased to report that we have managed to reduce our energy intensity by 7% (units of energy per person) and through adopting a number of water saving initiatives, we have reduced our water consumption by 50%.
We are also committed to reducing the amount of waste we generate and send to the landfill. In the last 3 years we have achieved a 59% reduction in waste by recycling paper, aluminium and plastic, and implemented a number of paper saving projects by streamlining our processes and introducing paper re-use initiatives.
Our operations team has also implemented sustainability procurement tracking for purchases for our own facility inline with LEED EBOM guidelines. In addition, we have exceeded our own targets to achieve 28% of all purchases to meet green criteria – not just for our own facility, but for our clients’ projects too.
According to the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) we are the only company in our industry to receive the certificate among a total of eleven companies in the UAE. We could not have done it without our team and our green partner Green Technologies and their continued support in helping us to lead a ‘greener’ lifestyle.
