29 March 2019
Sandton Convention Centre was abuzz on Wednesday night as Pareto Limited, South Africa’s premier shopping Centre investor, and one of the country’s leading retail property industry players, hosted their inaugural series of masterclasses aimed at promoting sustainable building.
Pareto Group CEO Malose Kekana shed light on the importance of these masterclasses in exposing young black professionals to big developments, and ultimately in creating jobs.
The first masterclass focused on Architecture and was chaired by industry leaders who worked on the construction of Menlyn Mall. Menlyn is the largest Eco-friendly retail space in South Africa, the first of its kind to target a green star certification in this country.
A percentage of materials used in the construction were recyclable. Even some of the waste from building materials was converted into compost that was donated to local communities for their various gardening projects. The project also generated over 2000 permanent jobs and over 20 000 construction jobs.
Yovka Raytcheva-Schaap of Aurecom Group, an engineering and infrastructure advisory company, shared some interesting stats from the C40 Cities South African Building Programme launched in April 2018.
This initiative aspires to make zero carbon building a standard practice in South Africa. The number of certified buildings in participating cities Tshwane, eThekwini, Johannesburg and Cape Town is currently over 400. The aim is to have all new buildings zero carbon by the year 2030.
Watch a highlights video from the event here.
Malose also hinted that Pareto will branch out into the transport industry.
We are definitely looking at introducing eco-friendly transporting systems to South Africa. We are currently in talks with PRASA, but we will share this exciting venture in due time
— Malose Kekana, Group CEO of Pareto Limited
See what Malose Kekana had to say about South African adoption of green technology, and which areas he feels, are the crucial starting blocks…
Pareto will be hosting more masterclasses throughout the year, covering topics such as town planning (in May), construction and structural development (in June), quantity surveying (in July), leasing (in August) and the legislative environment (in September).
