At the 2016 Macao International Environmental Co-operation Forum & Exhibition (MIECF), the Green Business Co-operation Day was held yesterday (March 31) as experts, scholars and industry representatives were invited to provide their opinions regarding Blue Ocean Strategy for enterprises and Green Business Opportunities for the hospitality industry, which featured in the first two sessions of the green forum. Participants believed that other than incineration and backfilling, a scheme should be devised to convert wastes into resources, reducing the generation of waste at the source so that the goal of zero waste can be achieved. Whether for waste disposal or environmental protection for hotels, the most important factor is that citizens and tourists must be environment-conscious before all waste and environmental measures can be effectively carried out.

“Turning Green into Gold” through waste reduction from headstream and recycling

The first two sessions of the green forum for the Green Business Co-operation Day were held yesterday afternoon. The topic of the first session were “Zero Waste and High Efficiency – Blue Ocean Strategy for Business Success”. The participating scholars and businessmen pointed out that garbage disposal is a global issue. The prevailing methods are incineration and backfilling, which are not enough as zero waste should be the goal. For example, Blue Ocean Strategy or other schemes may be used to figure out a way for garbage allocation to turn wastes into resources.

Participants indicated that Europe has adopted different schemes to reduce redundant packages from product headstream so that the manufacturing cost and consumer’s expenses would decrease. Currently many countries worldwide are making laws regarding environmental protection. In addition, there are also companies concerned about whether the environment would be affected during the process of raw materials being transformed into finished products. The use of sustainable energy sources is a focus in logistics and all employees should be well aware of their responsibility of helping the company achieve a sustainable goal.

Education on environmental awareness may double the effect of reducing wastes

The topic of the second session, “Turning Green into Gold” – Green Business Opportunities for the Hospitality Industry”, was mainly for the hotel industry and scholars to discuss the measures that can be taken regarding environmental protection and to share their experience. The industry pointed out that Macao’s hotels have worked hard on environmental protection, especially water conservation, and achieved great results because they understand there are many tourists coming to Macao and the large water consumption rate and substantial waste generated are stressful. This would require hotels to take more measures to reduce waste to maintain operation and fulfill their responsibility towards environmental protection.

Meanwhile, all participants believed that more and more tourists are focusing on environmental protection. Many hotels worldwide also regard environmental protection as a selling point, believing that whether on water conservation, energy saving or reducing food waste, a good environmental protection plan would produce benefits for their hotels. However, participants considered that the awareness of environmental protection of citizens and tourists are equally important as long as they would consciously avoid wasting water, electricity and food, so that all measures could be doubly effective. Therefore, education is an important step. It’s imperative that the government should take the lead to educate citizens and tourists to change their mindset on consuming.  

In addition, at the Green Business Networking Cocktail Reception & Signing Ceremony, 32 firms signed project contracts and successfully expanded their business through the 2016 MIECF.

Two forum sessions held on the Green Business Co-operation Day on March 31

Signing ceremony for 32 firms on the first day