RONA donates $750,000 to the Centre for Sustainable Development
Montreal, June 18, 2009 – RONA will contribute to the construction in Montreal of the Centre for Sustainable Development a donation of $750,000. The funds are a contribution to the Centre’s ongoing major corporate fundraising campaign, with the goal of $5 million between 2008 and 2012.
Members of the Centre and its president, Sidney Ribaux, are delighted with their new association with RONA. “We’re proud to be able to count on such a prestigious partnership. This major investment helps us take another step towards actual construction of our project,” Ribaux said.
With their dedication to the cause of the environment, RONA and its President and CEO, Robert Dutton, have set an example of leadership for Canada’s business community. “I’m very happy to be involved in this major project and to work as one of the fundraising campaign’s governors,” Dutton said. “It was natural that RONA should be associated with the plan to build one of the most ecologically advanced buildings in Canada. This demonstration building will help make individuals and decision-makers more aware of the need to rethink our ways of building and renovating, so we don’t mortgage the future of generations to come.”
Marie-José Nadeau, Executive Vice-President – Corporate Affairs and Secretary General of Hydro-Québec. , is the fundraising campaign’s honorary chair. Nadeau is glad to be able to count on a well-known business personality like RONA’s CEO. “Mobilizing the business community is a major key to the success of this project, and it’s important for our campaign to ally ourselves with businesspeople of Robert Dutton’s stature.”
RONA’s donation to the Centre for Sustainable Development will be financed in part by sales of plastic shopping bags, which now cost 5 cents each at all stores in the company’s network. This initiative was introduced on June 1 to encourage consumers to carry their hardware, home improvement and gardening purchases in reusable shopping bags – an environmentally friendly alternative. The contribution to the Centre for Sustainable Development is the first project financed by RONA through its new shopping bag policy.
About the Centre for Sustainable Development
Eight organizations in the environmental and social sectors – Équiterre, Centre de la petite enfance Le Petit réseau, Centre québécois du droit de l’environnement, Conseil régional de l’environnement de Montréal, Environnement JEUnesse, Option consommateurs, Regroupement du service Éco-quartier and Regroupement national des conseils régionaux de l’environnement du Québec – formed an alliance to create the Centre for Sustainable Development, a non-profit organization with a mission to build and operate an ecological demonstration building in downtown Montreal, with features that will inspire action on the part of the general public and decision-makers in real estate and construction.
As a project with both a social and an environmental purpose, the Centre will house the offices of the eight member organizations, as well as those of other organizations that share the same values. The building will also serve as a site for education and research on sustainable development. The Centre will aim for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum certification, the highest possible level in the system of standards for buildings of leading environmental quality. The Centre also launched its citizen mobilization campaign on May 6, 2009, spearheaded by the group “Mes Aïeux.” For more information about this campaign and the Centre, please visit www.lamdd.org.
About RONA
RONA is the largest Canadian distributor and retailer of hardware, renovation and gardening products. RONA operates a network of close to 700 corporate, franchise and affiliate stores of various sizes and formats. With close to 30,000 employees working under its family of banners in every region of Canada and more than 15 million square feet of retail space, the RONA store network generates over $6.3 billion in annual retail sales. Please visit http://rona.ca.
For more information :
Krystel Papineau
Équiterre
514-522-2000, extension 247 / kpapineau@equiterre.org
Eva Boucher-Hartling
Director, External communications, RONA
514-599-5114 / eva.boucher-hartling@rona.ca