Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/936285
51 Events maltatoday SUNDAY 4 FEBRUARY 2018 New appointments at Vassallo Group DUE to the successful growth of Vassallo Group over the past few years, Pio Vassallo has assumed assume the full responsibility of Group Chief Executive Officer. He will be focusing his efforts on Group Strategy outlined in the group's Vision 2023, strengthening the synergy between the various companies forming the Vassallo Group and representing the Vas- sallo Group in all of its current and future partnerships. To this end, Vassallo has stepped down as Chief Executive Officer of Vassallo Build- ers Limited but will remain an Ex- ecutive Director on the Board. Pio Vassallo received his under- graduate degree in Construction Management from the University of Reading in 1999 and is presently reading for his Masters Degree in Business Administration. He has been with the group since gradu- ating from University and holds directorships on the Boards of a number of subsidiaries and direc- torships in all of the associate com- panies of the group in the hospital- ity and real estate sectors amongst others. Following this, Vassallo Builders Limited announced that Jonathan Buttigieg has been appointed as the Chief Executive Officer of Vas- sallo Builders Limited. Buttigieg has been in employment with the Company since 1993 and recently occupied the position of Deputy CEO and Commercial Director. He has served as a company director on Building Consultancy Services Limited, Makeezi Limited and is currently a company director of Powerezi Limited and MIDI plc. Buttigieg has been a participating director on the Vassallo Group Strategy Board since 1999 and has represented Vassallo Builders in several joint venture projects throughout his career. Jonathan Buttigieg received his undergraduate degree as a Civil Engineer from the Faculty of En- gineering at the University of To- ronto in 1992 and then went on to successfully read for his Masters Degree in Construction Manage- ment from the Faculty of Archi- tecture at the University of Bath in 1999. These changes came into effect on Thursday. Last chance to apply for the 2018 Malta EY Entrepreneur of the Year™ Award THE countdown has started for established and rising entrepre- neurs to participate in the 2018 Malta EY Entrepreneur of the Year™ Award. Applicants have until Friday 9 February 2018 to submit their nominations for the second edition of this prestigious award. The winner, who will be an- nounced during an award cer- emony on 21 March 2018, will be flown to Monaco to compete for the grand prize, the EY World En- trepreneur of the Year™ Award. Being nominated can elevate a company's profile through ex- posure to other entrepreneurs, sponsors, judges and guests. The winner will also benefit from sig- nificant international visibility, which could drive the next phase of their company's growth. In addition to the main award, the EY Rising Star Award will be presented to a con- tender running a high growth business that is generating excitement in the market. The win- ner of this award will also attend the World Entrepreneur of the Year™ event in Monaco. Nominees must ei- ther be Maltese or have been operating a com- pany based in Malta for at least two years. Anyone, including em- ployees, company advi- sors and financiers can nominate an entrepre- neur, with the latter's consent. Many of the nominations come from the en- trepreneurs themselves. Last year, Corinthia Group Chairman Alfred Pisani and Alta- ro Software co-founder and CEO David Vella won the Maltese EY Entrepreneur of the Year™ and EY Rising Star awards. The EY Entrepreneur of the Year™ Award was launched in the US in 1986 and has now spread to 165 cities in over 60 countries. It is the world's biggest and most pres- tigious business award for entre- preneurs and the only one with a truly global dimension. The event brings together national winners from more than 60 countries, se- lected from a pool of over 5,000 nominees. The nomination form and more details can be found on www.eoy- malta.com Be green: crush your plastic containers and win €100 a day FROM the moment we open our eyes, put on our spectacles, brush our teeth, check out our phone and put the ket- tle on, we would have come into contact with numerous plastic items — plastic is all around us. Used in everything from food contain- ers to computers, this popular polymer is versatile, lightweight, durable, and relatively inexpensive, playing many im- portant roles in our everyday lives, but its widespread use is causing unprecedented environmental problems. Thousands of tons of plastic packaging enter our island each year, and in the past decade, we have produced more plastic than during the whole of the last century. The problem is that it takes 500 to 1,000 years for plastic to degrade. GreenPak Cooperative has successfully collected 57 per cent of the plastic pack- aging its business partners put on the market in 2017, surpassing the minimum targets of 22.5 per cent laid down by the EU. As the biggest collector of recycled waste on the island — covering close to 70 per cent of all local councils across Malta and Gozo — the cooperative is responsi- ble for emptying the colour-coded bins at bring-in sites, as well as collecting recy- cled waste from households. But this is not enough. Every individual has an important role to play and Green- Pak, as part of its corporate social respon- sibility, is investing thousands of euros in innovative ways to encourage people to recycle… starting from plastic containers. "We have just launched the Crush & Win competition where we give €100 a day to consumers who crush their plastic containers. Our primary objective is to target littering and reduce the amount of plastic irresponsibly discarded in our en- vironment and oceans," GreenPak CEO Mario Schembri said. Basically, anyone can take part in the campaign. All they have to do is write their telephone number on a plastic con- tainer they find outdoors or have at home, crush it, and dispose of the item in one of GreenPak's blue recycling bins across Malta. "It is estimated that plastic constitutes 60-80 per cent of the world's marine lit- ter, which is a worrying statistic. As GreenPak we will continue working hard to change attitudes and polluting habits," Schembri said. Crush & Win follows on from the highly successful Crush campaign launched by GreenPak last year, in which some of Malta's best known personalities took part in a fun video aimed at encourag- ing the public to crush and recycle plastic bottles. "We need to wake up and realise we all have to do much more to protect our planet. With our latest campaign every- body wins — consumers and the environ- ment." For any questions regarding GreenPak's 'Crush & Win' campaign call on 2166 1081 or check out its Facebook page. EY World Entrepreneur of the Year™ event in Monaco