Ayala Land - Health, Safety & Environment Program of the Year

Company: Ayala Land, Inc., Makati City, Philippines
Company Description: Ayala Land is the largest property developer in the Philippines with a solid track record in developing large-scale, integrated, mixed-use, sustainable estates, offering balanced and complementary mix of residential spaces, shopping centers, offices, hotels and resorts, and other businesses. With 25 estates and 10,285 hectares of land bank and, it is present in 55 growth centers nationwide.
Nomination Category: Company / Organization Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Health, Safety & Environment Program of the Year - in Asia, Australia and New Zealand

Nomination Title: ZERO WASTE: Ayala Land’s Circular Waste Management Program

Ayala Land is the Philippines’ leading developer of sustainable estates, offering a diverse mix of properties such as residential, retail, office, hotels, and leisure developments, that support local economic growth and nation-building.

The company was established in 1988 as the real estate arm of Ayala Corporation, a pioneer conglomerate and builder of the country’s premier financial and commercial district, now known as Makati Central Business District and Ayala Center.

Today, Ayala Land has a total of 30 sustainable estates and is present in 57 growth areas nationwide. It has five residential brands, namely Ayala Land Premier, Alveo, Avida, Amaia, and BellaVita, which deliver quality homes to a broad segment of the housing market. Its commercial development and leasing portfolio are comprised of Ayala Malls, Ayala Land Offices, and Ayala Land Hotels and Resorts Corporation.

The amount of plastic waste generated not only within the company’s properties but across the Philippines, and the significant risks they pose to the environment, drove Ayala Land, Inc. (ALI) to action as it developed a Waste Management System wherein plastics can be reused for its businesses.

Plastic waste from packaging became a more pressing issue during the pandemic with the increased demand for home shopping and food deliveries. ALI’s solution to this was a novel but effective process of recycling plastics into eco products.

ALI partnered with social enterprise Green Antz Builders to create eco products by shredding clean and dry plastic discards and mixing them with sand, cement, gravel, water and an additive. This process produces eco bricks, eco pavers, and eco casts, among others.

Advocating the concept of a circular economy wherein waste is converted to usable resources, ALI collects clean and dry plastics from its properties, then buys these eco products for use in its construction activities such as the sidewalk improvement project at thecountry’s Makati Central Business District.

Since 2019, ALI has two processing facilities located in its Arca South estate and the Lio ecotourism estate in Palawan. Waste from ALI properties are brought to these facilities for conversion into eco products.

To date, ALI and Green Antz have diverted 29 metric tonnes of plastic equivalent to waste generated by 415,000 people in a day. They have produced 523,000 pieces of eco products, enough to build 149 classrooms covering 60 sqm each.

Unlike a traditional linear model in which waste is disposed to landfills, ALI’s unique circular waste management model establishes a process in which a waste material has alternative destinations for recycling or reprocessing.

The model involves a two-pronged approach, the first of which is collecting plastics through proper segregation at source. This entails behavioral change across all stakeholders – changing business-as-usual actions in which segregation at source is not practiced, to ensuring that stakeholders actively segregate waste, keep them clean and dry, and set aside the materials that have alternative destinations such as plastics.

For this campaign, ALI conducted waste management sessions before and even during the pandemic for all its employees and locators in malls and offices. ALI also set up drop-off points in its shopping malls and estates where the general public can contribute their clean and dry plastics. Through these efforts, an ecosystem was created to collect all plastics, not just the ones found in ALI’s properties.

The second step is the conversion and use of plastic-infused construction products which then go back to ALI’s developments. ALI also continuously undertakes R&D to come up with new products that use recycled plastics.

By embracing a circular approach to waste management, the company avoids disposal and lessens demand for finite resources, reducing environmental impacts such as emissions, and land and water pollution. ALI continues to look for strategies in closing the loop for other types of waste in order to recycle or reprocess them and ultimately achieve zero waste.