Gibraltar Sustainability Awards winners announced

The results for the 2020 Gibraltar Sustainability Awards have been announced with winners from in all 12 categories.

The categories included education; planning, design and construction; sports and leisure, technology; business; community engagement; events, and food.

Winning the award for Engagement For Sustainability (Community) was the Action for Housing and GBC Viewpoint Programme

Taking the Sustainble Technology award was Girls In Tech, Education For Sustainability was won by St Bernard’s First School and the Runner-up was Marlene Dalli.

The Gibraltar 2019 NatWest International Island Games won the award for Sustainable Events and the Calentita Food Festival which was held during the games won the award for Sustainable Food.

The Gibraltar 2019 NatWest International Island Games also won the Sustainability In Sport And Leisure Award with the Runner-up being Europa Football Club.

Winning Sustainable Business was Gibraltar Shine Easy Ltd and the Runner-up was TSN law firm.

The businesses who jointly won Sustainable Engagement were Chestertons and Carmel Khalilian with the Runner-up being OTWO.

The Regional Impact winner was Instituto de Estudios Campogibraltareños. Being awarded the Planning, Design And Construction Award was North Gorge Ltd and the Runner-Up GCArchitects, E&M Engineers Ltd, Carduus and Casais.

Recvieving the Minister’s Future Generations Award were joint finalists #GibraltarSchoolStrike4Climate and Joyful Riot.

Iona Sacarello won the Gibraltar’s 2020 Young Champion Award.

The Awards are informed by the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and celebrate local and regional best practice. They recognise the efforts taking place in Gibraltar, to address these goals across a number of sectors and groups. On the September 8, finalists were named across the 12 categories.

The Awards were also seeking to identify Gibraltar’s 2020 Young Champion for Sustainability and the recipient of the Minister’s Future Generations Award. The international judging panel was composed of sustainability professionals based in Australia, Lebanon, Singapore, Spain, Wales, South Africa as well as Guernsey and Gibraltar.

They were asked to review and rank the submissions. Finalists submitted short videoclips that captured their concerns and achievements. These built upon the detailed application submitted. Judges commented how the videos brought alive some of the realities as well as the value of these initiatives - making the Awards even more competitive and decisions even harder.

One of the judges, Kim Loddo, a Gibraltarian and director of Inglis Badrashi Loddo Architects UK, said all teams should be proud of their work.

“Making recommendations was a hard task and there clearly is a lot of work being done in the local community to promote and embed sustainable practices and to respond to climate change as robustly as possible,” she said. In my opinion, and without exception, all the shortlisted teams, should be very proud of the positive impact they are having”.

The trophies commissioned as the Awards were original handcrafted pieces made by out of repurposed materials, in keeping with the sustainability commitments being made by the nominees.

“We thank the artists that carefully crafted the Awards as well as all those who nominated and submitted entries for the awards,” said the Minister for the Environment and Sustainability, Dr John Cortes.

“The Awards drew attention to the diversity of intiatives across our community that are seeking to build a better future. We hope that by recognising and sharing this best practice we can inspire others to take on practical and relevant steps in support of sustainability”.

Professor Daniella Tilbury, Commissioner for Sustainable Development and Future Generations, was very grateful to all involved.

“It is important to celebrate achievement but also to scale up the adoption of sustainability,” Prof Tilbury said.

“There is an urgency which requires us all to get involved as well as to rethink our engagement with people with planet. We must encourage a move away from single actions to embracing more sustainable lifestyles and professional responsibilities.”

“I am very grateful to the youth groups, community action groups, NGOs, associations, clubs, schools and businesses that are tackling sustainability issues head-on.”

The Kusuma Trust Gibraltar is the main sponsor of the 2020 Gibraltar Sustainability Awards. The ceremony was produced and broadcast by GBC TV following the need to reschedule the live event due to Covid-19 restrictions.

The Commissioner expressed her thanks to these partners for making the Awards ceremony possible.

The Awards are offered by the Office of the Commissioner for Sustainable Development and Future Generations which has responsibility to scale-up the adoption of sustainability in Gibraltar.