This year, primary schoolchildren carefully shepherded by teachers trekked in pairs in an orderly manner to the opening of the event by Saad Al-Shehri, deputing for Prince Turki bin Nasser, who is the head of the Presidency of Meteorology and Environment.
“It’s good to see children involved in this and introducing environmental consciousness at an early age,” said Mohsen Angawi of Natlus Divers as the crowds built near the hotel pool.
Hilton’s General Manager Wolfgang Maier explained the hotel’s involvement in hosting the event that marked Earth Day.
The company conducted a worldwide survey of staff and customers asking them for feedback and the result was the Blue Energy philosophy that produced a focused initiative taking in various aspects of hotel business.
“One of the areas we are very concerned with is community service and environmental responsibility,” said Maier. “We have been involved with the cleanup for some years but this year we put Blue Energy into practice for the first time in this very worthy local initiative.”
Over 100 divers assembled for the formal opening and shortly after plumbed the depths of the 40-meter-deep drop down a reef wall along the edge of the Corniche.
There, among a web of discarded fishing lines, they gathered discarded non-biodegradable trash ready for hauling to the surface.
After several hours work bringing garbage thrown into the sea back to the surface, volunteer teams and a smartly clad team of the Baladia’s “purple people” cleaning operatives sorted the rubbish into piles of plastic, metal and other trash ready for recycling.
Hilton’s PR executive Gada Alamdar said that much of the recovered trash would be recycled. “Some though will be used by a group of local artists to create sculptures and installations,” she said. “The idea is to put the rubbish in front of the public not in an aggressive way, but to show them that it accumulates in the environment and hopefully to encourage thoughtful disposal.”
