At Sonae Sierra, we have long recognised that Corporate Responsibility (CR) performance affects our financial results, and we believe that our long-term business success is dependent on outstanding economic, environmental and social performance. We have pioneered the integration of CR principles in the shopping centre business and we are already reaping the benefits of this forward-thinking approach.

As early as 1998, we approved our Environmental Policy establishing our commitment to undertake our activities in an environmentally responsible way and our ambition to set an example to the real estate sector by demonstrating that integrating economic and environmental aspects of the development process can lead to greater economic profitability. Our approach to social issues focuses on the stakeholder groups most affected by our operations: our suppliers; tenants; visitors, employees and the communities close to our shopping centres and new projects. First and foremost, we are committed to conducting our activities so that risks towards people and assets are minimised, and to achieving excellent levels of social responsibility, safety and health. We formalised this commitment in 2004 with the introduction of our Safety and Health Policy.

Since embarking upon this journey, we have tackled our main CR challenges and made significant progress towards our CR objectives. We have:

• Reduced our shopping centres’ electricity consumption per m² of mall and toilet area by 30% since 2002. The electricity efficiency measures which we have introduced since then enabled us to avoid the consumption of an additional 100,000kWh of electricity in 2011, which is equivalent to over €7.3 million in energy costs.
• Reduced our GHG emissions per m² of GLA by 67% since 2005.
• Reduced shopping centres’ water use per visit by 12% since 2003. The water efficiency measures which we have introduced since then enabled us to avoid the consumption of an additional 212,422m³ of water in 2011, equivalent to €814,962 in costs.
• Increased the proportion of waste recycled in our shopping centres by 179% between 2002 and 2011. This has allowed us to avoid costs of €0.6 million in 2011.
• Embedded our responsible procurement policies into our Service Suppliers Management Procedures.
• Maintained high levels of tenant satisfaction and engagement with tenants on CR issues.
• Invested a total of €6,225,562 in local community initiatives between 2008 and 2011 and set up 29 Community Advisory Panels (CAPs) across our sites since 2007.
• Maintained high levels of employee satisfaction and staff training, reaching 48.9 hours of training per capita in 2011.
• Reduced the number of non-conformances detected per hour of SPO by 63% since 2005.

We were the first company in our sector to achieve ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001 certifications for our corporate Environmental and Safety and Health Management Systems, and most recently, our property funds were ranked as the most sustainable in Europe and third worldwide by the 2011 Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB). Along the years we have received many other prestigious awards and certifications in recognition of our commitment and achievements in terms of CR, which you can read about in Our Story.

Fernando Guedes Oliveira
CEO

Our 2011 Economic, Environmental and Social Report can be downloaded here: