INSIDE INTERVIEW
The Westfield Donau Center on the road to sustainability

Careful use of resources and a focus on sustainability is also a current topic at the Westfield Donau Zentrum. The sustainability goals of the United Nations provide orientation in this regard. The Westfield Donau Zentrum is well on the way to implementing these goals, as Center Manager Zsolt Juhasz explains in an interview.

Mr. Juhasz, the Westfield Donau Zentrum is committed to its social responsibility in terms of sustainable business. What does that mean?
The company behind Westfield Donau Zentrum is Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield. This company owns, develops and operates shopping centers worldwide - 12 countries, 89 shopping centers, 1.2 billion visitors a year! The company realized many years ago that sustainability is crucial to our success. "Corporate Social Responsibility, or CSR for short, is at the heart of our strategy and is integrated into all key decision-making processes. We are always looking for new ways to improve our environmental footprint and strengthen our social impact. We have adopted the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as part of our overall CSR strategy and our activities contribute directly to at least 10 of the 17 UN goals of Agenda 2030.

With the "Better Places 2030" strategy, you have developed a 3-pillar model - what are these three pillars aimed at?
Firstly, the reduction of CO2 emissions across our entire value chain (Better Spaces). Secondly, we act as a link for growth in the communities in which we operate (Better Communities). And last but not least, all URW employees have taken annual individual CSR targets into account in their work (Better Together).

There is also increased cooperation with the municipality and the district?
That is correct. In order to define the common challenges, we have held workshops and discussions with the police, the district council and NGOs, for example, and we have also defined a mission statement for our positioning: The Westfield Donau Center will become a place of inclusion where the community works together and finds solutions to achieve the goals of the SDGs.

What are your priorities?
Fighting poverty, improving children's health and education, building an environmentally friendly and safe environment. We offer our center as a stage for many international organizations. In October, together with UNO City and the City of Vienna, we organized an exhibition on the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) and the history of the UN for our customers. I would like to thank Mr. Nesirky for the very interesting and constructive conversation with us.

What projects have already been implemented?
Waste avoidance and recycling is a very important point for us. The organic waste is prepared for the biogas plant in our organic waste plant using a biochemical process. Apart from the operational advantages, we have achieved a 25% saving in operating expenses for this fraction and a reduction in our CO2 footprint of around 14 tons per year. Our social market is also a great example. With the support of our service providers, we have built the first and only social market in a shopping center in Europe. In the Samariterbund social market, people on low incomes can buy everyday necessities at a reasonable price. Only some of these products are donated; many come from our tenants in the building. With this project, we have saved 40 tons of food and made it available to people on low incomes. What I want to show with these examples is that all of these projects are sustainable and contribute to achieving the SDGs.

What can we expect in the future?
We are not short of ideas. There are many projects that we have in mind. For example, we are working with the Viennese start-up Skoonu to replace disposable food packaging with reusable solutions.