Celebrating World Environment Day 2013 at Taj Samudra

This year Taj Samudra Colombo commemorated World Environment Day with a variety of activities which reached out beyond the hotel premises. Taj Samudra Colombo celebrated the important day as the hotel believes that even a little change can go a long way and that such changes will contribute to reduce the environmental issues faced on a daily basis.

The annual Environmental Day Celebrations at Taj Samudra Colombo is conducted with a motive of taking corrective action towards pollution. Gracing this year’s Environmental Day celebrations of the hotel were Kananathan from the Sri Lankan Envoy to Uganda, Jonathan and Hilary Jones from the Royal College of Surgeons, Area Director (Sri Lanka) and General Manager Rohit Khosla along with all the heads of departments of the hotel and associates.  

World Environment Day (WED) is celebrated every year on the 5 June to raise global awareness of the need to take positive environmental action. The motive of such a day is to personalise environmental issues and to enable everyone to realise not only their responsibility, but also their power to become agents for change in support of sustainable and equitable development. This significance of the day has grown over the years which serve as evidence of the growing importance placed on a wide range of environmental issues. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), every year 1.3 billion tons of food is wasted, which   is equivalent to the amount produced in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. It is also stated that one in every seven people in the world go to sleep hungry and more than 20,000 children under the age of five die from hunger on a daily basis.

Given this enormous imbalance in lifestyles and the resultant devastating effects on the environment, this year’s theme ‘Think.Eat.Save’ encourages people across the world to become more aware of the environmental impact of the food choices they make and empowers them to make informed decision.

Taj Samudra Colombo dedicated many initiatives throughout the hotel in an effort to be greener by educating the associated on the importance of reducing food wastage. As a result, the hotel carried out activities such as the opening of an organic vegetable garden, introducing a compost pit, a vermin-compost pit, planting herbal plants in the hotel garden, distributing herbal plants and dried herbal drink packets to the motorists.

Reputed for its environment-friendly policies, the hotel continued its efforts to be greener by educating associates on the importance of caring to reduce food wastage.  In order to achieve this, a film on the reduction of food print was played to showcase the methods to reduce such wastage beyond the hotel.

With absolute faith and aspiration, all associates as one Taj Family took an oath “That we Think, We Eat and We Save along with the world to minimise Food Prints and to direct the community towards a sustainable future where food is not scarce. I am not One, We are Whole, We are Taj” to mark this Environmental Day.  

The entire hotel has been involved in commemorating Environment Day, as associates from different departments took part in an art competition organised to meet with the theme for this year as a part of their increasing awareness program. The judging of the art competition was carried out by the Area Director (Sri Lanka) and General Manager Rohit Khosla, along with the Learning and Development Manger Eranga Bundara.

Taj Samudra Colombo has taken measures to ensure that the message of being conscious of the fact that food wasted results in resources and the inputs used in the production of all foods are lost. Therefore, the hotel believes in creating an environment where food wastage is minimised as they believe in starting with their own actions before encouraging others.