Sonae Sierra receives the Green Thinker Award

* Expo Real and PropertyEU crown Sonae Sierra Europe's most sustainable developer among 100 leading companies in the sector

* The Company introduced the "green centre" concept within the shopping centre market

Sonae Sierra was just elected as Europe's most sustainable developer. Yesterday, the Expo Real property trade fair and the Dutch PropertyEU trade publication presented the new "Green Thinker Award" to the international shopping and leisure centre specialist. This accolade attributes to Sonae Sierra the greatest pioneering achievement in terms environmental and corporate responsibility strategies among Europe's 100 leading property developers.

Àlvaro Portela, Sonae Sierra's CEO, stated: "Sustainability during both the development and operation of our shopping centres is at the core of our strategy and we have been implementing this very systematically for many years now. For this reason, we are not only extremely proud to receive the ‘Green Thinker Award', but we are also particularly pleased that this award - presented for the first time ever - will further promote the environmental awareness within the international property industry."

The criteria of selection for the Green Thinker Award was very elaborate and followed several steps until the jury decided for the winner. A shortlist of 14 Europe's leading development companies was analyzed through research into the environmental and corporate responsibility strategies and was submitted to a jury of independent experts in the field of sustainability.

Sonae Sierra, the international shopping centre specialist, is a pioneer in Europe in matters of the environment care. The company, which owns 48 shopping centres in Europe and Brazil, has been focusing on sustainability in the development and operation of its shopping centres for ten years now. The core of the company's ambitious environmental policy is a comprehensive Environmental Management System (EMS), certified in accordance with the international ISO 14001 environmental standard, designed to minimise the company's activities-related environmental impact worldwide for all projects and throughout the entire lifecycle - from the development phase throughout to the operation.

The company has already certified 13 major building sites, and has the objective to certify the construction of all future developments. In addition Sonae Sierra aims at certifying all its shopping centres under operation in terms of their environmental performance. Worldwide, 26 existing shopping centres have already received the coveted and internationally-valid ISO 14001 environmental certification. A further 13 will follow this year. This will increase the share of Sonae Sierra shopping centres with the coveted environmental certificate to more than 80 percent.

Sonae Sierra publishes its clearly-defined sustainability principles and objectives annually in a Corporate Responsibility Report.

source : Sonae Sierra