GT Town Center Pavia launched on Saturday, November 30 their Clean and Green campaign this holiday season, as part of the mall’s Garbage to Treasure project.
Garbage to Treasure is the mall’s environmental preservation initiative every Saturday and Sunday which encourages the public to bring their recyclables and junk items at the back of the mall in exchange for cash.
To enhance this project some more, GT Town Center brought in three eco-warriors who talked about how to make zero waste, recycling and green Christmas, and workshop on ecobricks and clean up campaigns.
Mitchie Gallegos Jimenez, a housewife who discovered living a zero waste philosophy at home. She started with the use of reusable diapers for her first baby. And soon it followed, she discovered other ways to lessen waste in their house.
Her husband shared their zero waste life online, until it became viral and she was asked to guest in GMA 7, ABS CBN, radio shows and other magazines. She has been featured for converting their house into a ZERO WASTE house.
She claims she does not add to landfills anymore and their house no longer contributes to the garbage collection. Her talk was all about their journey to a Zero waste home and housewives of Pavia were interested to learn how to apply it at home and in schools.
The second speaker that GT brought in was Rage Gonzales, founder and CEO of waystePH, a start up for waste management, she created an app to collect waste from homes and businesses. She is now in Bacolod and having talks with Pasay. Soon hopefully she can launch this in Iloilo.
Rage is an avid bird watcher and fights for the environment every day, and she talks about her she can achieve a circular economy which is more than a regular recycling economy.
The last speaker for the day was Dann Diez. He has founded NGOs such as Sustainable Seeds4com (sustainable energy and enterprise development for communities) and he is also founder Ecobricks PH.
He is involved with a lot of clean-up movements in the Philippines. He gave the general public a workshop on Ecobricks. The Ecobricks are one solution to this trash of today and what we can do with it.
GT as a Green Town started on this eco project, by bringing in expert partners to help save the environment because there is so much waste in this country that goes to the landfills and seas and pollute the habitats of animals and people.
The Philippines is after all the 3rd biggest polluter of oceans in the world. Nothing to be proud of, so GT knowing they have to power to change things took it upon themselves to launch a campaign on the environment with speakers and a 2-day eco fair, aside from the Garbage to Treasure corner.
Eco-Christmas Tree Lighting
The whole day event was highlighted by the lighting of Eco-Christmas Tree made from recycled PET bottles. It took about 2.5 weeks to complete the tree, from segregating the PET bottles in the trash to making it. The event was attended by the local government officials of Pavia and the barangay captains.
GT Town Center as ‘Green Town’
GT Town Center Pavia is the only mall with a park construction that includes a small aviary, and some animals for children to view. It also has open spaces for fun get-togethers for the general public.
As a Green Town, trees were not uprooted during construction but preserved for the park. The mall also has waste management and waste water treatments in line with the eco-friendly philosophy.
Mall-goers may also tag along their pets inside the mall and bond with them while shopping as the mall is pet-friendly.
