Cosentino organises its “Environment Month”

In the context of World Environment Day, the company develops an agenda with a series of volunteering activities for its employees that will take place throughout the month of June.

Cosentino‘s purpose is ‘To inspire people through innovative and sustainable spaces’, a significant goal as the Spain-based company aims to leave as large a footprint as possible on people’s lives, and as small a footprint as possible on the planet. For this reason, and on the occasion of World Environment Day (5th June), the multinational has organised a programme of activities that will take place over the month of June.

This programme is part of its global corporate campaign ‘Care for the Planet’, which establishes a permanent framework for all Cosentino’s pillars, initiatives and solidarity projects related to sustainability and social. Based on the premise that the first managers and ambassadors of change are its own employees, different activities will be used as leverage to contribute to the change we all want to see in society and citizenship.

‘Preserve Cabo de Gata’ & ‘Preserve Virginia Key’

In 2021, at the same time as the launch of Silestone®’s ‘Sunlit Days’ carbon neutral collection, Cosentino and the NGO Equilibrio Marino joined forces to help save the Posidonia meadows and preserve the Mediterranean. Many of the company’s employees were part of the team that learnt about the activities of this NGO and set up a small clean-up crew.

This year the initiative has been extended even further, as 140 Cosentino employees, together with their families, took part in a morning long event on Saturday 4th June in the heart of the Cabo de Gata Natural Park (Almería). The major actions, aimed at preserving Cabo de Gata and turning the Alboran Sea into an international benchmark for marine conservation, were as follows:

• Talk on the current situation of the Mediterranean: overfishing, pollution, plastics and climate change. Mediterranean flagship species: Posidonia meadows, coral reefs and fish. By Fernando García, co-founder of Equilibrio Marino, and the scientific adviser of the UNESCO World Geopark Cabo de Gata-Níjar, Gloria García Hoyo.
• Children’s workshops
• Plogging (a combination of jogging and picking up litter) Both aquatic and overland.

Cosentino employees practiced this activity on land by hiking on the beaches of San José and Genoveses, from which they extracted up to 24 kg of waste. And, in the aquatic environment (with scuba diving, kayaking and paddle surfing activities), has been made the clean-up of the bottom of the port of San José from which 18Kg of waste was extracted.

Globally, the Cosentino North America team will also replicate these group exercises. A team of employees from the Group’s subsidiary had planned plogging and conservation activities in Virginia Key Beach Park, a natural park located just off the access road to Key Biscayne in Miami. This action was rescinded and postponed to a later date.

Environmental Milestones of Cantoria Industrial Park, ‘Virtual Tour’

Furthermore, on 7th June, the company will make a complete tour consisting of an on-site and virtual visit (for workers located in other countries) to the Cantoria Industrial Park. The tour will focus on Cosentino’s major environmental milestones, highlighting some of the most significant sustainability projects currently underway, such as the construction of what will be the largest photovoltaic installation by an industrial company in Spain.

‘Reforest Filabres’

Finally, on 15th June, a new main activity of this agenda will take place under the slogan ‘Reforest Filabres’. Its aim is for the company’s own employees to learn about and participate in the restoration work in a quarry area in Macael, as part of the company’s programme of forest restoration activities.

This action takes over from the family volunteering initiative held last year, along with the Environmental Association Sustenta, in the area of Las Menas de Serón in the Sierra de los Filabres mountain range, which also had the collaboration of the non-profit association Serbal, and the Research Centre for Scientific Collections from the University of Almería (CECOUAL, in Spanish).