When one thinks of Monaco, lavish cars, flamboyant casinos and luxury fashion boutiques immediately spring to mind, with ‘eco-consciousness’ and ‘green living’ rarely emerging in our thoughts about Monaco or the French Riviera in general.

Despite being world-renowned as being the hub of extravagance, affluence and flamboyance, over the past decade Monaco has been a beacon of eco-conscious creativity, in its drive to become a more eco-friendly community.

In continuing its pledge to lead an eco-conscious existence and to maintain a fight against pollution, Monaco has initiated a new environmentally friendly slogan, ‘Less energy, less water, less paper.’

At the heart of Monaco’s race to be a leading green city is the city’s Grimaldi Forum, Monaco’s main congress and cultural centre, which was the first congress building in Europe to have successfully obtained the certification in Environmental Management.

The Grimaldi Forum won this highly prestigious award in 2008 and has since continued championing eco-awareness and environmentally friendly activities.

The ‘Less energy, less water, less paper,” initiative has been launched to help lower the Grimaldi Forum’s carbon footprint even further, despite of cutting its electricity levels by almost ten per cent during the last five years.

Talking about the new eco-awareness campaign, Nathalie Paccino, the Grimaldi Forum’s environmental and human resources manager admitted that eradicating ‘luxuries’ had not been easy but “the return is worth the investment.”

“Less energy, less water, less paper,” these are the things we want to achieve,” said Paccino.

In what is an environmental-inspiration to congress centres and other large buildings around the world that attract large crowds of people, not only does the Grimaldi Forum recycle almost 50% of its waste and run its air conditioning system on water from the Mediterranean, but this year the Forum also plans to decrease its paper usage by 2%, by limiting products such as print offs and providing clients with ‘greener’ solutions.

So the next time you associate Monaco as being one of the most extravagant cities in the world, cast a thought to the Grimaldi Forum, which can be considered to be a ‘beacon on green inspiration’.

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