Quality and green-friendly shopping
By Rowena C. Burgos
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 05:54:00 11/16/2008
MANILA, Philippines – Ayala Malls launches today its new TV commercial called “I Lov’emall.” The ad features the architecture and landscapes of its malls: Glorietta, Greenbelt, Alabang Town Center, Ayala Center Cebu, Market! Market!, Bonifacio High Street and TriNoma. It also highlights the malls’ world-class services and events and pioneering sustainable development programs.
Shoppers will find quality hotel-like concierge booths that offer assistance on store locations, merchant directory, event and movie schedules, restaurant and cinema reservations, call-a-taxi services, flight and travel information and hotel bookings.
On the other hand, a roving concierge in Glorietta and Greenbelt provides assistance to customers who need help in finding store and restaurant locations. “Like in hotels, we offer true-blue concierge service,” says Cesar Jose Jesena, senior division manager. “If you look lost or struggling with your shopping bags, the roving concierge will help you.”
The Ayala Malls’ Mobile Concierge serves as your own personal Ayala Malls’ assistant, with all the mall information you need at your fingertips. Meanwhile, the tech-savvy will be delighted to call the malls their next home as Ayala Malls now offers free Wi-fi connection in selected areas.
For the physically impaired, Ayala Malls features ramps, specialized parking spaces and separate bathrooms and cubicles. “Such features are more strategically located. We also provide wheelchairs and the malls’ guards are trained to give assistance to the handicapped,” Jesena says.
In December, Ayala Malls will offer shoppers “A Card” which can be availed through membership. This privilege card offers store discounts, freebies and perks.
Eco-friendly
As an ongoing effort to sustain the clean and green environment and as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility, Ayala Malls incorporates global best practices in eco-friendly mall design, construction, and operations.
“Green is not just the color of trees but also applies to energy and water conservation, proper solid waste management and the whole masterplanning of the mall,” says Edmond Maceda, sustainability consultant. “For example, in Greenbelt, we designed ponds into the landscape so we can harvest rain water and use it to irrigate the plants.”
Water used by the shops is recycled to water the 50,000 trees and over 60 species in the malls’ nurseries.
Ayala Land’s Solid Waste Management (SWM), which started in 1996, is a pioneer program in environmental impact reduction. The program aims to reduce the volume of residual waste by recovering materials that can be reused, recycled, and processed into compost. As a result, the malls’ residual waste volume has gone down by 85%.
In addition to the SWM, Ayala Malls also pioneered the Waste Market concept, wherein selected mall parking lots are converted to collection and drop-off points for the sale and trading of non-traditional wastes such as used appliances, car batteries and electronics devices.
“Things you don’t see from a consumer’s perspective are some of the more important sustainability considerations we put in,” Maceda says.
At present, Greenbelt 5, TriNoma and Serendra are using the latest in airconditioning system called ice thermal storage. Ice is produced at night when energy rates are the lowest. That ice is used to cool the malls during daytime.
Recently, Maceda went to Singapore to study displacement cooling. “Instead of glowers from the ceiling, we have diffusers from the ground level based on the principle that cool air will displace the hot air going up. So instead of the energy that you need for the air to blow the air down, you use less energy as the hot air is pushed upward. We’re gonna implement that in the near future.”
The group is finding more ways to save water like reducing algae build-up in the cooling tower pipelines of the airconditioning system. “This results in tremendous water savings like 100,000 cubic meters over the past few years. On energy efficiency, we save close to 6 million kilowatt hours of electricity purchased from the grid. That’s equivalent to 3,000 tons of carbon emissions prevented,” Maceda says.
Since 2000, Ayala Malls has been using 20 garbage trucks a day in going to the landfill. But due to the malls’ segregation and solid waste management efforts, the number has been reduced to 3 to 4 trucks a day.
When the malls’ merchants put out their garbage unsegregated, it won’t be collected. They pay P25 per bag of garbage. “This Pay As You Throw program is a means to reduce their waste,” Maceda says.
The malls’ merchants have also begun shifting to energy-efficient lighting, refrigeration, manufacturing, and packaging, thereby becoming green companies themselves.
“We focus on projects that would have the most impact on reducing greenhouse gas emission, fighting climate change and shaping the market,” Maceda says. “It’s an opportunity to educate the market. And the malls are the biggest and strongest engine for us to do this market shaping.”
The Ayala Malls’ energy conservation efforts have been recognized when it was awarded the Don Emilio Abello Energy Efficiency Awards in 2007.
Design awardee
Last month, Ayala Malls won the International Council of Shopping Centers Asia Pacific Gold Award for Bonifacio High Street’s design innovation; Silver Award for TriNoma’s design innovation; and Gold Award for marketing excellence of Bravo Filipino: A Tribute to Filipino’s Creativity and Ingenuity, which featured a four-month long festival celebrating the Filipino creative genius during the opening of Greenbelt 5.
“There are still white spaces or gaps in the market that we can fulfill like community centers or value malls. There are some beliefs that we might be overmalled in Metro Manila but there are still opportunities in the provinces and what we call ’in-fill’ places within this geography. With these community centers we’ll put up, we’d like to differentiate ourselves,” says Marivic Añonuevo, senior vice president and group head. “In Asia, that’s the way to go. For example, in Novaliches the retail is unformatted. We’d like to organize it not only for business social convergence but where the community would look at it as their mall.”
SOURCE:
http://showbizandstyle.inquirer.net/lifestyle/lifestyle/view/20081116-172484/Quality-and-green-friendly-shopping
For inquiries, reagarding any Ayala Land Premier project, feel free to contact me.
Coco Midel
+63 917-580-2013
coco.ayala@gmail.com
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