Sustainability is Everyone's Job

Sustainability is Everyone's Job

As GREEN Hospitality continues to drive and support the sustainability movement in the hospitality industry across Hong Kong, Macau, and the Greater Bay Area, we've launched a campaign to celebrate the individuals doing their part behind the scenes. By showcasing ‘Sustainability Champions’ from different roles in the hospitality industry, the campaign aims to foster connections, facilitate mutual learning, and reinforce the message that sustainability is everyone's job, regardless of their role.

This month, at Melco Resorts' workshop for SMEs, GREEN Hospitality was invited to discuss the importance of reducing plastic use, and we had the opportunity to speak with Sylvia Chua, Global Supply Chain Director at Melco Resorts and Entertainment, after the workshop.

With a steadfast commitment to sustainability, Melco integrates eco-friendly practices throughout its procurement processes. Guided by its Supplier Code of Conduct, Melco is dedicated to reducing its environmental impact, exemplified by sourcing all its bed linens and bath towels from OEKO-TEX®-certified suppliers since 2021. Furthermore, with an emphasis on ethical sourcing, Melco is ahead of its targets, with 86% of chemicals sourced in 2024 in the Green and Amber categories, following a ‘traffic-light’ rating system .

In addition to these initiatives, Melco has collaborated with A Plastic Ocean Foundation, The Mekong Club, and Zero Foodprint Asia to organise workshops for colleagues and 19 SME partners, equipping them with the knowledge and mindset to address critical issues such as plastic and waste reduction, modern slavery in hospitality supply chains, and food system sustainability. These workshops aimed to enhance awareness and empower participants to implement sustainable practices within their operations.

Read our interview with Sylvia Chua below to learn how Melco integrates meaningful sustainability initiatives in its supply chain.

1. How do you ensure that sustainability is a key factor in Melco Resorts’ procurement processes? Can you give examples of sustainable suppliers you have integrated into the supply chain?

Ensuring sustainability and procurement is all about weaving environmental and ethical considerations into every decision. Our Supplier Code of Conduct sets clear expectations for ethical and responsible business practices, human rights, and environmental protection.

Sustainability is integrated into every stage of our procurement processes. This is reflected in the amenities that we procure for our guest rooms and the responsibly sourced ingredients in our food and beverage offerings. We prioritise suppliers certified by organisations like MSC or ASC for sustainable seafood.

We have set targets to increase our sustainable seafood consumption and to ensure that the products we source, such as chemicals and bed linens, are safe for our health and the environment. Melco Resorts is part of the first group of signatories to the Global Tourism Plastics Initiative, led by the UN Environment Programme and the World Tourism Organisation in collaboration with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Melco commits to reducing waste and consumption of single-use plastic in our resorts. We will report on single-use plastic by weight across our operations and have targets to eliminate unnecessary packaging.

Our tendering process is now guided by this framework, and we are continually searching for alternatives that can reduce our plastic consumption. For example, we work with NORDAQ to provide reusable glass bottles or filtered water in our guest rooms to replace single-use plastic, thereby reducing 13.2 million plastic bottles in 2024. For other areas, we are also working with another water supplier that prioritises plastic-free packaging, ethical water sourcing, and carbon footprint reduction.

2. What metrics or KPIs do you use to measure the sustainability impact of your supply chain decisions? How do you track progress toward sustainability goals?

We use a range of metrics to measure the sustainability impact of our supply chain. One key metric is the percentage of spend with local suppliers, especially SMEs. In 2024, 86% of our purchases were from local companies in Macau, 59% of which were from local SMEs. In Manila and Cyprus, 76% and 40% of our procurement supports local businesses, respectively.

We also focus on sustainable seafood, which was 18% of our seafood supply as of 2024. Our commitment extends to the products we use. For instance, since 2021, we have sourced all our bed linens and bath towels from OEKO-TEX®-certified suppliers. In addition, we monitor our use of chemicals, categorising them using a ‘traffic-light’ rating system (Green, Amber, or Red), which rates chemicals based on their impacts on human health, toxicity, ecosystem degradation, and bioaccumulation, prioritising those certified by internationally recognised eco-labels such as Green Key and Green Seal. In 2024, 86% of chemicals sourced were in the Green and Amber categories.

Additionally, we prioritise sourcing sustainable ingredients for our restaurants. Since October 2024, we have ensured that 100% of the eggs we use are cage-free. Moreover, over 40% of our venues in Macau, Manila, and Cyprus now serve meat alternatives, and 93% of our outlets offer vegetarian options on their menus. Furthermore, 95% of our outlets serve sustainable seafood, and lower-carbon beef is served at 15 of our outlets in Manila and Macau. These metrics demonstrate our ongoing commitment to sustainability and responsible sourcing within our supply chain.

To maintain our high sustainability standards, we require all our new suppliers to acknowledge acceptance of our Supplier Code of Conduct, including its environmental requirements.

3. Have you implemented any programmes to engage suppliers in sustainability practices? How have you encouraged them to adopt more eco-friendly practices?

We run ‘Sustainability and Ethics Workshops’ to help suppliers adopt responsible practices. These workshops cover topics such as waste reduction, increasing recycled content, and preventing modern slavery. We have collaborated with organisations like A Plastic Ocean Foundation and The Mekong Club to provide specialised training on reducing waste and minimising the risk of modern slavery within our supply chain.

Today, we have invited our suppliers for a workshop and have guest presenters from Zero Foodprint Asia to discuss the importance of regenerative farming practices, and GREEN Hospitality to talk about single-use plastics in the hospitality industry. To encourage suppliers to adopt more eco-friendly practices, we showcase our suppliers with innovative solutions at events like our ‘To the Table’ event and ‘Heart of House’ roadshows, and we offer capacity-building initiatives through our SME Academy. This initiative not only helps our suppliers understand our expectations but also provides them with the resources and knowledge to implement more sustainable practices.

We offer more business opportunities, including revenue and branding, if the products are from sustainable brands.

4. How do you collaborate with other departments, such as Housekeeping and Food & Beverage, to promote sustainability initiatives within the supply chain?

We collaborate regularly with other departments and have two internal working groups to inform our teams about updates on our initiatives. All room amenities, F&B ingredients, and packaging we purchase are discussed with management teams and the Sustainability team to understand the best options available that will minimise our environmental impact.

It takes a lot of collaboration with operations to bring a reusable solution such as NORDAQ into our business. We have allocated space within our resorts to install the bottling machine and allocated manpower for the sanitation and bottling of premium filtered water. Similarly, with the Winnow food tracking machines, we have had to train our colleagues to use these machines, and our teams now have the data to analyse food waste in our employee dining rooms. By separating food waste through this process, we have also allocated resources to compost our food waste on-site.

We are constantly testing reusable solutions and putting out tenders for home compostable packaging in order to reduce our impact.

With F&B, we organise events such as ‘To the Table’ to connect chefs with local and sustainable producers, and educate our teams on sourcing sustainably. Together, we set sustainability targets for their respective areas and work to ensure sustainable outcomes.

5. Why are you personally interested in sustainability? And how do you personally get involved in sustainability practices?

For me, sustainability is about creating a better future for generations to come. I admire how people balance complex systems, from supply chains to everyday habits, all in the hope of preserving resources for future generations.

I believe we are creating a culture within our supply chain teams and continuously educating them so that we can support the well-being of our communities and protect our environment. We have certainly seen the shift internally, and sustainability is no longer a ‘nice to have’. Our targets now make it very clear what we are trying to achieve.

I personally stay involved in sustainability practices by setting clear sustainability criteria, such as including environmental and ethical considerations in our suppliers' selection, and educating and influencing our internal stakeholders. This helps them understand that sustainable options may carry a short-term cost, but in the long term, they gain in reputation, risk management, and compliance.

6. How do you balance the need for cost efficiency with the implementation of sustainable practices in the supply chain?

This is a challenge, but being more sustainable doesn’t necessarily have higher costs in the long run. We focus on long-term value over short-term costs and actively seek suppliers who offer competitive pricing on their products and services. The NORDAQ system, for instance, required initial investment costs and allocation of space and manpower. But the return on investment showed that investing in this system has reduced our cost of shipping for plastic bottles of water in the long term.

In the case of sourcing cage-free eggs, we were faced with the lack of supply in the market. But as we set a commitment to source 100% cage-free eggs across our portfolio, we communicated to our suppliers and worked with Lever Foundation, an NGO that works to create a more humane and sustainable protein supply in Asia, to engage local distributors to secure a sufficient and reliable supply and create economies of scale to facilitate the switch to cage-free eggs. As of October last year, we have reached our goal at all our properties in Macau, Manila, and Cyprus

7. Looking ahead, what innovative sustainability initiatives do you envision for Melco’s supply chain? What changes would you like to see industry-wide in this area?

   
   

We aim to increase our local supplier network, and increase capacity-building workshops to find more sustainable solutions down our supply chain. We are open to using tools to help with supplier assessments and auditing. With our procurement system, we are aiming to build in sustainability tagging to make it easier for our teams to identify and track all the items we procure.

Industry-wide, I’d like to see greater transparency and traceability across supply chains. It would also be beneficial to have more standardised sustainability certifications to simplify and align sustainable sourcing efforts.