Our activities for waste reduction & more sustainable operation

At our full-service real estate company, Nhood, we are aware of our ecological responsibility, and in order to operate more sustainably and reduce waste, we have been working over the past year to involve the tenants of our Auchan Korzó shopping centres in the circular economy in a number of ways.

In order to make the Auchan Korzó shopping centers more sustainable, we strive to involve our retail partners more and more in the circular economy. Therefore, last year our CSR team introduced our tenants to the Rakun Box Community, the Munch platform and the "Pass it back, Bro!" initiative for collecting used mobile phones, launched by the Jane Goodall Institute and the KÖVET Association.

Rakun offers restaurants and shoppers durable steel cans instead of single-use plastic food containers, creating a circular system that benefits the environment, customers' wallets and restaurants that make food hygiene a top priority. A minimum monthly fee is charged to join the box community, in return for unlimited use of their steel cans, which are available at the participating restaurants. Since last April, the Lakoma restaurant in Auchan Korzó Budakalász and the Platni Grill restaurant in Auchan Korzó Kecskemét have joined the cooperation. As a result, customers have used Rakun boxes 240 times since, which means that so many plastic boxes have not been used and thrown away.

Last year, with our help, 22 stores of Auchan Korzó’s five tenants -  Full GSM, IGB Store, Megafull GSM, ProPhone, Pálma Mobil, Euromobil & Tablet Store and Mobilpont - joined the second-hand mobile phone collection campaign called " Pass it back, Bro!”, launched by the Jane Goodall Institute and the KÖVET Association. This allowed customers to drop off their used phones, GPS devices, tablets and their accessories in all 18 Auchan Korzó shopping centers. During the cooperation, we strive to establish as many acceptance points as possible with the involvement of the stores. This way, we make it widely available for customers to get rid of their old gadgets, thereby enhancing the collection and safe recycling of unnecessary electronic waste.

Munch is a similarly environmentally friendly initiative, with the help of which restaurants and shops can sell their leftover, but still wholesome food at a discount. In this way, everyone benefits, since restaurants and shops earn income by selling the remaining products, and environmentally conscious customers can get Munch food packages at a discount of at least 40 and even 60 percent.

The long-term goal of the business, which is increasingly popular among customers, is to make “munching” - that is, the consumption of food that has not been sold but is still perfectly suitable for human consumption - become a habit, integrated into people's everyday lives. Since the start of the cooperation in February last year, the La Menza and Grill Station restaurants at Auchan Korzó Budaörs and Maglód, as well as the Mira Csárda restaurant at the Auchan Korzó Törökbálint, have joined the program, saving more than 600 portions of food in the five restaurants.

Regarding the cooperation, Márk Berényi, Senior Sales Manager of Munch said:

"We are delighted that several Auchan Korzó restaurants are making it a priority to reduce food waste! The past months have shown that our affiliated partners are saving more and more food and more customers want to do something about sustainability. Together with them, we have already saved hundreds of meals from going to waste! We hope that in the future even more Auchan Korzó tenants will join our platform and choose extra income and waste reduction instead of losses!"

Dóra Diána Szemerédi, Head of CSR and Internal Communications of Nhood Hungary said the following regarding this topic:  

"Appropriate waste management is of utmost importance from the point of view of sustainability, which includes not only the management of already generated waste, but also the prevention of waste generation, as well as the maintenance of the life cycle of various disposable devices or their individual components. In addition to the fact that we, as real estate operators, must pay attention to environmental awareness, we also want to involve the tenants and customers of the shopping centers we manage in our projects as widely as possible, for which collaborations with organizations that have a similar approach and want to work for the circular economy provide a great opportunity. Both Munch, Rakun, and the Jane Godall Institute carry out extremely valuable activities, and we are happy and proud of our joint work. We would like many people to follow our example, thus contributing to a greener environment and a more livable future."