CapitaLand ramps up Earth Hour campaign with 1.2 million STAR$® rewards to encourage greener sustainable lifestyles
Over 280 CapitaLand properties worldwide rallying stakeholders to #ChangeClimateChange
Singapore, 20 March 2017 – CapitaLand is ramping up its annual Earth Hour campaign in Singapore by organising a series of fun and educational activities accompanied by a suite of rewards to encourage stakeholders to adopt greener, healthier and more sustainable lifestyles. This year, over 280 CapitaLand properties around the world, including all 34 CapitaLand properties in Singapore, will be participating in the global World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Earth Hour movement, which officially kicks off on 25 March 2017, 8.30pm local time. Among the goodies up for grabs are some 1.2 million STAR$®, which can be exchanged for CapitaVouchers for spending in CapitaLand malls in Singapore or redeemed for merchant offers on the CapitaStar1 mobile app.
Mr Tan Seng Chai, Group Chief Corporate Officer of CapitaLand and Chairman of CapitaLand Sustainability Steering Committee, said: “Climate change is one of the key challenges of our time, and CapitaLand is making a concerted effort to engage with the community on sustainability-related issues and rally our stakeholders to #ChangeClimateChange through small, everyday changes to the way we live, work and play. CapitaLand has participated in Earth Hour every year since the movement came to Singapore in 2008. To mark our 10th year of supporting Earth Hour, we are leveraging our offline and online assets to create the platforms for empowering our stakeholders with the tools and knowledge to lead a greener sustainable lifestyle.”
For the first time, CapitaLand will be bringing its Earth Hour campaign to its CapitaStar digital platform to enhance its sustainability engagement with its increasingly tech-savvy and mobile-enabled customer base. From 20 to 23 March 2017, CapitaStar members in Singapore, which number over 770,000, will be greeted with daily green tips each time they log in to the CapitaStar mobile app. These handy tips are designed to be easily adopted in our daily lives to demonstrate that every individual can make a real contribution to protecting the environment. As a bonus, CapitaStar members can participate in a special Earth Hour quiz by entering a keyword into Sparkle, the fully-automated artificial intelligence chatbot that resides in the CapitaStar app. The quiz will be launched on 25 March 2017 at 8.30pm to coincide with the launch of Earth Hour. CapitaStar members who correctly answer Sparkle’s question before the quiz closes at 11.59pm that day stand to win STAR$® . One million STAR$® for quiz participants will be up for grabs.
CapitaLand is also running an ECO IDEA photo contest at its office buildings in Singapore for the entire month of March 2017, to engage its office tenants on environmental sustainability. Upload the most creative photo submissions of practising the 3Rs of waste minimisation – reduce, reuse and recycle – onto the Facebook page of CapitaLand Commercial Trust (https://www.facebook.com/capitalandcommercialtrust/) and stand to win attractive prizes, with tickets to Wildlife Reserves Singapore Parks and a total of 200,000 STAR$® to be picked up. Similarly, the newly opened Ascott Orchard Singapore, which is located in Singapore’s most fashionable shopping destination, will be running an Earth Hour Quiz for its residents to raise awareness of how they can make their stay more environmentally-friendly, and to encourage residents to continue these practices when they return home for a more sustainable impact.
To broaden its Earth Hour campaign globally, over 50 CapitaLand malls across Singapore, China, Malaysia, Japan and India will be organising a series of cycling-related activities. The aim is to promote the adoption of carbon-lite modes of transportation, by encouraging shoppers in participating malls to cycle a total distance of 40,075 kilometres, equivalent to Earth’s equatorial circumference.
In Vietnam, CapitaLand is organising a series of green activities in the week leading up to Earth Hour, beginning with the planting of 20 trees in the Binh Chau Phuoc Buu Nature Reserve and culminating in a green festival on the day of Earth Hour at The Oxygen Mall, a three-storey shopping mall developed by CapitaLand in the heart of Ho Chi Minh City District 2. Activities at the green festival include a collection drive for used plastic bottles and paper cups, and a craft workshop for children using these collected materials. Shoppers can also donate used books in exchange for small pots of plants, with these curated books benefitting underprivileged pupils studying in three CapitaLand Hope Schools in Vietnam.
In Chengdu, China, pre-loved clothing and books will also be collected, curated and donated to needy families, minimising waste while benefitting the underprivileged. From trashcollection hikes along the beaches of Busan in South Korea, the Chaotianmen riverfront in Chongqing and the mountain trails in Xi’an, China; to greenery planting by residents at Ascott’s serviced residences in Bahrain, China, India, Indonesia, Laos, Philippines, United Kingdom and Vietnam, CapitaLand is engaging its stakeholders on all fronts to advocate #ChangeClimateChange.
For its sustainability efforts, CapitaLand was this year listed in The Sustainability Yearbook 2017 with a Silver Class Sustainability Award, placing it in the top three among real estate companies worldwide and making it the only Singapore company with such a distinction. CapitaLand is also listed in the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index and Asia Pacific Index, Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark Report (Regional Sector Leader for Asia, Diversified), FTSE4Good Index Series, MSCI Global Sustainability Indices, STOXX® Global ESG Leaders Indices, Singapore Exchange Sustainability Indices and Channel NewsAsia Sustainability Ranking.
1 CapitaStar is Singapore’s largest multi-mall, multi-store rewards programme. Its Singapore membership has more than doubled in the past three years to over 770,000 as at end 2016.