Community Updates

How Caesars Is Working on the Sustainable Development Goals

Published 8 years ago | About a 3 minute read

What are the Sustainable Development Goals?

September 25th marks one year since the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were announced. You may remember the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a set of poverty-related goals created by the UN in 2000, and the SDGs are similar in some ways. Like the SDGs, the MDGs focused on poverty and associated issues like child mortality and infectious disease. Environmental sustainability was also a consideration. The SDGs build where the MDGs left off; they’re more detailed and span a variety of areas, from ending poverty and hunger to improving economic growth and leveraging clean energy.

Here are the Sustainable Development Goals:

The SDGs are also different from the MDGs in how they were created and how they’ll be achieved, which is where Caesars comes in.

What Companies Can Do to Support Sustainable Development Goals

Though national governments hold ultimate responsibility for achieving the goals, they can’t do it without the collaboration of many stakeholders. That’s why the SDGs specifically call on companies to help address the world’s biggest challenges, from health to economic development to responsible consumption.

According to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, “Business is a vital partner in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Companies can contribute through their core activities, and we ask companies everywhere to assess their impact, set ambitious goals and communicate transparently about the results.”

What Caesars Can Do

As an initial step in contributing to the SDGs, we examined what we’re already doing that aligns with the 17 goals. Our existing 11 citizenship priorities are related to our guests, employees, environment and communities, and there is a lot of alignment between our priorities and the SDGs.

In our 2015-2016 Citizenship Report, we outlined how the following eight Sustainable Development Goals are closely tied to our citizenship priorities and shared some examples of progress.

#3: Good Health and Well-Being: Our Wellness Reward employee program has 80% voluntary participation rates. Since between 2000 and 2015, our employees’ cholesterol was reduced by 29%; rates of smoking were reduced by 31%.
#5: Gender Equality: We have a 42% rate of women in management and actively promote women vendors.
#8: Decent Work and Economic Growth: We provide decent work by hiring for diversity (34% of our managers are people of color). We also support economic growth in local communities—in 2015, we generated $4.4 million of value for every $10 million in revenue.
#10: Reduced Inequalities: We take public stances on social justice issues important to our guests, employees and industry, such as LGBT rights, immigrant rights and human trafficking.
#11: Sustainable Cities and Communities: Caesars contributes to revitalizing city life and improving infrastructure in cities like Baltimore and New Orleans.
#12: Responsible Consumption and Production: For our business, responsible consumption includes responsible use of our “product,” entertainment. That’s why we’ve been a longtime industry leader inResponsible Gaming, training more than 45,000 employees in 2015.
#13: Climate Action: Caesars has reduced our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 25% since 2007 and is working to reduce them by 40% by 2025 (over a 2007 baseline).
#17: Partnerships for the Goals: We partner to advance sustainable business and positive impacts on society. We combine our expertise with organizations addressing problem gambling, climate, energy and social impact.

What’s Next

Caesars will continue to report our progress toward these eight SDGs to support a more sustainable and just world for all. In the future, Caesars will continue to build upon its work as a responsible business and deepen its work around the SDGs, such as outcomes of its impacts in reducing inequalities. Read more about what Caesars is doing to work towards the Sustainble Development Goals on our Corporate Citizenship blog.