GreenFootprint.ae
In 2020, SustainabilityTrends worked on a project with the UAE government that was a part of the Towards Next 50 Year Challenge, initiative in order to reduce waste in the UAE and support circular and green economy.
GreenFootprint.ae is an online and innovative crowd-sourcing platform for recognizing, supporting, and growing sustainable practices, with goals to reduce single use plastic in the UAE and close the loop, by addressing production, consumption and waste issues, and creating transparency. We are taking a holistic approach to create a value-share model for all by bringing together the government, industries, and consumers.
Today, we hear more and more about a CO2 footprint. We wish to look positively into the future showing good examples, and this is why we speak about the GREEN FOOTPRINT, demonstrating how to do it, in order to tackle climate change issues and offset carbon footprint!
Focus on Solutions
Locally, the UAE has one of the World’s highest waste per capita (Source, World Bank). Approximately 79% of waste ends up in the landfill (Source, Federal Competitiveness and Statistics Center). Plastics are the first cause of camels’ death. Households are counting for a big amount of waste produced, especially when it comes to food waste.
GreenFootprint.ae is a digital Sustainable City Guide (Helping end-users to find sustainable practices), Community Hub (Bringing together stakeholders to drive positive impacts), and Creative Sustainability Advisory for Impact (Supporting businesses to grow sustainably). We work around the globally recognized frameworks in order to support the local green economy, such as UN SDG.
Our 3 key activities are:
- Sustainable City Guide- Helping consumers to find sustainable practices
We feature the following categories: Sustainable events, Eco-restaurants, Eco-hotels, Choose Vegan places, Clean beauty products, Toxic free products and services, Sustainable Fashion and Ethical gifting solutions, Recycling stations, Zero Waste grocery shopping, Local Farms, Eco Products. Anyone can create a listing for free and with every action on the platform (creating listing, articles, reviews- visitors create points, and earn Ambassador stars).
- Community Hub: Bringing together stakeholders to drive positive impacts
We have over 300 local and sustainable businesses listed. We also collaborate with conscious consumers and influencers, that we call Community Leaders- people that make difference and show examples to others- through our campaigns for impact. As an example, since we started our Zero Waste Shopping campaign, we managed to divert over 65mil plastic bags from landfill.
- Creative Sustainability Advisory- Supporting businesses to grow sustainably
We are creative sustainability and circular economy advisory. We provide the services that are aligned with global and local frameworks and agendas.
Building agility
Our project was born during pandemic crises in 2020, as a result of adopting to the new circumstances, responding to the market needs, and creating agile business model to support local ethical businesses and green economy. As a part of Towards Next 50 Years initiative, we proved that the UAE has demand and supply for sustainable practices.
In 2020, we supported over 200 local small and medium ethical businesses, by helping them to reach out their markets. We work with ethical businesses in creating successful case studies for building circular economy in the UAE.
We engaged with over 1,000 passionate conscious consumers and environmentalist, in order to spread awareness and propose solutions on how we could live and work more sustainably so that we can scale up impacts and drive behavior change. We believe in smart partnerships and partner with over 20 local organizations to green build infrastructure, drive product development and scale up impacts.
We support local content and in-country values- We recognized and featured over 20 Emirati women in Green Business, as we care about promoting local values and local heritage. We also collaborate and work with local farms and local eco brands.
