(5 April 2017 – Hong Kong) New World Department Store China Limited (“NWDS” or the “Company”; Hong Kong stock code: 825), one of the largest owners and operators of department stores in Mainland China, took part in the “Earth Hour” lights-off campaign for the eighth consecutive year. “New World” and “Ba Li Chun Tian” branded stores under its umbrella switched off energy-consuming installations such as non-essential lights and neon lights, large advertising lightboxes, and signage lightboxes for an hour during 8:30 to 9:30 in the evening of 25 March, in order to raise public awareness of global warming. Three stores went an extra mile to host the “Unplugged Concerts” to encourage customers to practice green life with low-carbon music.

This year, 38 NWDS’ stores and offices across the country took part in the lights-off initiative. Amongst them, Yantai New World Department Store, Changsha New World Trendy Plaza and Lanzhou New World Department Store teamed up with local bands and art groups to curate the “Unplugged Concert”. Performers used their acoustic voices and unplugged instruments to invoke public awareness of environmental protection. Before the event, participating stores made use of the Weibo and WeChat platforms to publicize the preview of the lights-off campaign and the concerts, and subsequently drew more than 28,000 netizens to read, forward and like the feeds. On the event day, the three stores did not only attract large amount of foot traffic to the “Unplugged Concert”, but also created a “Sing-to-Advocate Green” check-in wall to call for customer’s attention and invite them to write down their green pledges. The wall was designed to spread the message to even more passers-by, so that everyone can enjoy low-carbon music while paying attention to the global warming issue seriously.

Founded by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in 2007, the “Earth Hour” lights-off campaign encourages organizations and the public to put sustainable lifestyles into action by turning off non-essential lights for one hour. The theme for this year’s lights-off campaign in China is “We’re Here for Blue Sky”, which inspires the public to take real actions to reduce carbon emissions and to work towards the goal of creating a blue sky for the future.

Ms. Violet Chan, Deputy General Manager of Corporate Communication and Investor Relations and Chairman of Sustainability Steering Committee of NWDS, said, “The contemporary lifestyle uses up huge quantities of natural resources and generates large volumes of carbon emissions, leaving us with fewer and fewer ‘blue-sky’ days and unusual climate changes. Therefore, we hope that we can promote the importance of energy saving to the community by continuing to support the “Earth Hour” lights-off campaign, and ask the public to take a serious look at the issue of global warming. Going forward, NWDS will organize a wide spectrum of green activities and fulfill our corporate social responsibilities by advocating the concept of sustainability to the public.”

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