Enjoy the fruit today, but plant the seed for tomorrow

Every minute is the future.

Think about it. How would your progress be impacted if the next minute could not provide you with everything you need to carry on?

Sustainability is the only guarantee of tomorrow.

Though it seems like a contemporary catchphrase, sustainability as a clarion call rang out 36 years ago in 1987 with the release of the Brundtland Report by the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED). Sponsored by the United Nations, this seminal work offers the most succinct definition: “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

It's hard to find a better nutshell explanation of sustainability.  

If we can avail of natural and manufactured resources to fulfil our optimum needs indefinitely, we will succeed in creating and ensuring a non-finite future for humanity. Call this wisdom, common sense, an awakening, or a fact of life; it’s a non-negotiable pact we must make and honor to ensure our survival.

If we do not think of the well-being of our future generations in the way we pursue our development, how will we ensure our legacy benefits them?

This awareness and intent are critical to the evolution of the Mohamad & Obaid AlMulla Group (M&O Group). Its vision and mission have always understood the relationship between sustainability and sustainable development: the former is the goal, and the latter is the path that helps us reach it.

The goal and the path must be intrinsic values to an organization. The M&O Group’s business philosophy is shaped by these values, which promote clear growth objectives based on sustainable practices and policies committed to intergenerational prosperity.

The M&O Group embeds sustainable practices as social, economic, and business core values across its divisions: Hospitality, Healthcare, Real Estate and Travel & Tourism.

For example, our asset management and hospitality division, Ishraq Hospitality, launched the ESG committee to amplify sustainable development, and the ESG committee’s goals for 2023 include:

• 50% reduction in paper.
• 60% reduction in single-use plastics.
• 2% reduction in food waste compared to 2022.
• 5% reduction in CO2 emissions compared to 2022.
• 19,000 hours of collective volunteering.
• Planting 5,000 trees by the end of 2023 in the global soil in collaboration with tree-nation.

I am happy to state that we are past the milestone of 1,000 trees planted (variously in India, Nepal, Madagascar, and Tanzania).

This year, many of our hotel guests received Ocean Bottles as sustainable gifts from Ishraq Hospitality to celebrate World Ocean Day, helping prevent 456 kg of plastic from entering the ocean. Every Ocean Bottle helps fund the collection of 1,000 ocean-bound plastic bottles. The people in coastal communities who collect plastic bottles earn money in exchange, which enables them to access health, education, and other necessities.

Sustainability in technology and energy is top of our agenda, and our Holiday Inn Express hotels in Dubai and Crowne Plaza Dubai Jumeirah serve as pilot hotels for IHG’s cloud-based WIFI program Aruba Central, ensuring secure, edge-to-cloud networking solutions for IT efficiency and reduced carbon footprint.

We are also keen to earn the sustainability stamp for all our hotel franchises and have submitted nominations to Dubai’s Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DTCM).

We also save trees. Our Real Estate division saved 10,927 trees by generating 273,180.53 KgCO2e (Carbon Footprint savings) per year. That converts to savings of 1,171,742.50 KWh per year.

How did we achieve this? Through energy-saving steps such as installing Chiller Water pumps with VFD (Variable Frequency Drives), connecting all major energy-consuming equipment to a dashboard that 24/7 alerts for abnormalities and installing a PMU (Power Monitoring Unit) for each Main Distribution Board (MDB) across our real estate properties for round-the-clock consumption dashboard analysis.

As a leading healthcare provider, we know how essential it is for the healthcare sector to reduce its carbon footprint. The sustainability policies of American Hospital Dubai, the flagship of the M&O Group, are inextricable with our commitment to offering world-class patient-centric medical care.

Green healthcare is our all-encompassing value, a sum of our vision and mission, and no detail is too small to include. I am excited to take American Hospital Dubai’s Sustainable Policy, integral to my vision for the hospital, to new heights.

From offering locally grown foods in our cafeteria, greening our buildings, increasingly employing green cleaning solutions, reducing plastic usage, promoting water and energy conservation by staff and patients, and installing energy-efficient systems to large-scale endeavors like reducing medical and other waste management, vigorously pursuing sustainable procurement, etc., we are building a redefined ecosystem that walks the sustainability talk.

We are training staff and engaging with communities to spread the word about sustainability, playing our role as town criers with relish.

I believe being the change is transformational. When you make a difference, you positively charge the atmosphere, infusing others with the desire to become part of the change.

There are many ways to inspire people, teams, and staff to become part of the sustainability legacy. Every organization can do it. It’s about encouraging, supporting, inspiring, communicating, sharing, acknowledging, and empowering them by leading from the front.

At the Mohamed & Obaid AlMulla Group, our leadership ethos paves the way for our people, and we walk together to reach our sustainability goals.