The Most Environmentally Friendly Casinos
When you think of a casino, you probably don’t imagine a business run with the clear goal to protect the environment. Still, there are now many casinos which are conscious of their carbon footprint and other practices that damage the environment, so they take the necessary steps to minimise their impact on nature.
Today’s article will take a look at a few casinos that have successfully implemented such sustainable policies. Extravagant casino hotels are rightfully thought to be one of the biggest polluters, but these examples show us that the industry is changing for the better, and that hopefully other casinos will follow in their lead.
The Venetian Macao
The Venetian Macao is a world-class hotel and casino resort located in gambler’s heaven – Macao. It’s owned by the American Las Vegas Sands company and as the name suggests, it’s in the Venetian style, even equipped with working canals where you can travel by gondola. The Venetian Macao is also one of the most sustainable casino resorts in the world.
The resort is accommodating to electric vehicles and encourages their use. The Venetian Macao has also switched to LED lighting, thus conserving energy and it has equipped its luxurious rooms with furniture from eco-friendly materials. In addition, the resort has done everything to minimise food waste. All this won it the Macau Green Platinum Award for eco-friendly businesses.
Mandalay Bay Casino and Resort
Mandalay Bay Casino and Resort, located in the heart of Las Vegas, is another good example of a luxurious casino resort doing its part in protecting the environment. Mandalay Bay has also switched to LED lights, but it went a step further by trying to make all its energy sources renewable.
There is a process in the works, which would turn the Mandalay Bay Casino and Resort into one of the businesses with the biggest array of solar panels in the US with 20 acres of panels on its premises. Moreover, the cooling equipment in place right now is one of the least energy-consuming.
Mandalay Bay is also helping the environment by sourcing their food from local businesses. This decision boosts the local economy, while also ensuring that there would be no need to transport produce, thus further minimising the carbon footprint.
Sibaya Casino
Sibaya Casino in Durban, South Africa is the leader in sustainable waste management on this list. Despite the best efforts of other casinos, Sibaya Casino simply takes the first spot. The casino opened with the idea to be eco-friendly, and it’s certainly doing well.
Sibaya Casino is bound on recycling and reusing materials, and it’s also encouraging its patrons to do the same. All waste is then composted, and the venue even has a wormery to speed up the process.
Caesars Entertainment
Caesars Entertainment is a large corporation with 58 gambling facilities. It’s one of the biggest gambling employers in the world, providing jobs for over 50,000 people, so everyone was thrilled when the industry giant pledged to invest $70 million in energy conservation projects.
The group’s most famous hotel, Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, was found to be consuming 5 million kW in energy, which prompted the business to adopt more eco-friendly alternatives. The hotel has since been revamped with new thermostats and water controls, which has already decreased its carbon production by 20%.
The company now trains their staff on how to implement environmentally friendly policies, fostering an eco-friendly work culture. What’s more, Caesars donates all unused toiletries from guest rooms to people in need, thus it minimises waste and helps the needy.
Melco Resorts and Entertainment
Melco Resorts and Entertainment is one of the gambling giants in Asia with headquarters in Hong Kong. It’s also the best example of an environmentally sustainable casino operator on the list. Melco is phasing out the use of single-use plastics like straws and cutlery, while also developing ways to create products that could be best reused and recycled.
However, the gambling leader didn’t stop there; instead, they made the ambitious goal to become carbon-neutral by 2030. The company supports numerous forward-thinking projects that seek to protect the environment. They say that they wouldn’t wait for state governments to legislate these changes, choosing to take it into their hands instead.
This is a noble goal we can all admire.
New Year, New Me – Thanks to Live Blackjack
Hey there, my lovelies! It’s been a long time since I last checked in with you, too long if you ask me… There was a reason for that. But since January is the celebration of new beginnings, I decided to bite the bullet and come clean.
Remember the diet I told you about – the Whole 30? Well, that thing was really hard but I mastered it somehow. For a few weeks, at least. I lost weight, got more energetic than ever and even gave jogging a try. Without my wine and cheese, I felt as fresh as a daisy. I was starting to believe I could go on like that forever. I went so far as to wonder why I hadn’t started earlier. Can you imagine?
Then, I decided I knew what I was doing, so I allowed myself small rewards – a glass of champagne at a friend’s wedding, a piece of velvet cake at a baby shower. It slowly but surely spiralled out of control. Life got in the way, as they say. The saddest part was that I didn’t even know it until it was too late – One day, I simply realised I had gained the dreaded pounds right back and was managing stress by drowning it in wine.
I wallowed in masochistic guilt and self-depreciation for some time… What could I do? Christmas was coming and with it all the things I love! You didn’t expect me to start a diet in partylicious December, did you? So, I went on with my disastrous way of life some more, gaining even more pounds and feeling even worse.
Around Christmas, I really got hooked on live blackjack. Playing the game and perfecting my strategy made me proud of myself. At a point, it was the only thing that got me going. I really put my back into it – reading up on pro tips and even what other players had to say in forums and support groups. Some of the best tips I got were from www.playblackjacklive.co.uk/ but shhh, you don’t want too many people to know about how they can take advantage of online casinos and enjoy themselves playing live blackjack. It’s a tip for my devout followers only. Wink. Wink.
So, I played a lot and made a good amount of cash just in time – I had maxed out my credit card shopping for Christmas presents, as you might imagine. But then, I went on playing and winning and playing and winning. I felt better about myself and quite positive with the new year starting and all. Anything is possible. I might restart my diet, get a gym membership… If a 47-year-old Renée Zellweger can play a 43-year-old Bridget Jones, imagine what I could do in a year.
I raise my glass to the New year! Here’s to a New Me! Bring it on, 2017! From yours truly, have an unforgettable year! Love, Genie xx
The Importance of Staying Safe In Online Casinos
We’ve all groaned, moaned and chuckled through health and safety classes at high school. “Remember to put the thing on the thing before doing the thing so you don’t end up with a thing in your thing” and other types of cringeworthy warnings have echoed in classrooms throughout the civilized world and have subsequently been completely ignored. Because at the end of the day, we don’t want to be lectured on stuff like safety, we know this stuff perfectly ourselves, don’t we? We’re adults, goddammit, the last thing we need is someone telling us how to stay safe! We know how to stay safe, hell, it’s in our very DNA! Only an idiot wouldn’t know how to stay safe, right? Well… We all say that, but at the end of the day, thanks to stuff like constant, boring, even downright deprecating health and safety warnings in high schools, the teenage pregnancy rates have dropped significantly. Same goes for stuff like STDs, scams, drug abuse… Hell, even violent crimes have decreased by a significant percentage because people know how to protect themselves from them now. Safety warnings, as annoying and condescending as they are, actually work.
The same goes for online casinos. Sure, nobody actually <i>wants</i> to sit down and read up on how to find a safe online casino, because “Only dumb people get scammed”, “If it’s in Google it’s got to be legitimate” and “This kind of thing would never happen to me”, but honestly, the more I researched this subject before diving into my own online casino adventure, the more I realized that finding a safe online casino is far from the clear cut most people expect it to be. Fraudulent casinos are everywhere, since they’re super easy to produce en masse, super cheap to maintain and even if they’re taken down, they can always pop up again. And if you play in an unsafe, unregulated online casino? Best case scenario, you’ll lose all the money you invest into it. I’m not saying that all the games are necessarily rigged to always make you win, quite the opposite – in fact, many of the games might actually have better odds than average! However, once it’s actually time for the casino to pay up your winnings, there will be delays in the deposit, or a convenient bank error, or worst of all, a “deposit fee” asking you to pay a certain sum in order to get you’re your money transferred. Worst case scenario, you could even go to prison!
So yeah, I don’t think I need to tell you that making sure the casino you’re playing at is legitimate is pretty important. But how do you check? Honestly, it’s a lot easier than you might think, and it only takes a couple of seconds as long as you know what you’re looking for. I mean, if I – who had never in her life touched an online casino until just very recently – could learn how to do it, then you absolutely can too! While the method for verifying sites is different in every country, you mostly need to be looking out for certificates. A good online casino will be certified by the government (such as the Gambling Commission in the UK) and will proudly display that certificate in its footer. Additionally, you should be able to look up said certificate from the Gambling Commission’s site. The best online casinos in the UK are also certified by independent organizations such as eCOGRA, which run tests on the games to make sure they’re not hogging all your hard-earned money! While it always helps to do a little bit of research and figure out what you need to be looking for, if you don’t want to do that, you can always check out some safe online gambling sites which have already been verified by people way smarter than you and I!
So the bottom line is, as annoying as the constant reminders to stay safe are, they serve a purpose and remind you that there’s a reason for their existence. In the casino world, scammers are everywhere, but the good news is that you really don’t need to do all that much to avoid them. Just be vigilant, look out for those certificates, make sure they’re legit and have fun!
My Impressions of Online Slots
Hey, everyone! Wow, it’s been over a month since I started this blog already! Guess I’m finally starting to get the hang of this whole “commitment” thing, huh? Sure, a one-month anniversary isn’t exactly an achievement, unless you’re a clingy fifteen-year-old girl in her very first relationship ever, but it’s actually a pretty big milestone for me, since I can’t really remember committing to anything serious for more than a month or so, outside of stuff like school and my day job. So yay, progress! Anyway, much the aforementioned teenage girl who proceeds to give a gift to her hubby for their one month anniversary and inevitably proceeds to make him very uncomfortable in the process, scaring him off and shortly afterwards ending up single (this is a completely random example and not at all related to my life experience), I, too, decided to commemorate the event with a gift for you guys!
Today, I decided to share a little bit of my experience playing online slots over the past month. Keep in mind that before then, I only knew about slots from movies like “What Happens in Vegas”, and as we all know everything is depicted so accurately in Hollywood, sarcasm mode. But yeah, this was an entirely new journey for me, and the things I found were… Let’s just say, interesting. My first impression of the slots is just how many of them there actually is! I mean, it’s crazy! Most award winning casino sites have hundreds of those things, to the point where it’s a bit overwhelming for a newbie like me! Sure, they promote a couple of the more high-profile slots (most of which are based on pre-existing properties) right there on the front page of the casino, but for the most part you’re left to your own devices to figure out exactly what it is you want to play. And as I said, it can be a bit too much for someone who’s taking her first steps into this sort of thing – you kinda need to learn how to run before you can walk, if you know what I mean.
Still, I didn’t let that deter me! I marched on bravely and realized quite joyfully that the overwhelming majority of the slots allow you to try them out for free with a demo account, which is a pretty great, risk-free way of allowing players to pick their favorites. As such, I relished in the opportunity and tried over fifty different slots. I only played most of them briefly, maybe about a dozen spins or so per slot, but just from that I managed to get the idea that a lot of them are really similar. Don’t get me wrong, the bigger slots (especially the ones that have a brand name behind them) are AWESOME, very different from each other and with lots of unique features, but the smaller, less famous ones seemed almost like they were copied and pasted with slightly different graphics. It was a bit jarring, but I guess every entertainment industry has this problem – I mean, just look at Hollywood, for every good movie in genres like action, comedy or romance there’s a dozen that try to emulate it at the most basic level and fail miserably.
I’m happy to say that at the end of the day I managed to have fun with the slots, and even picked a few which I’ll continue to play for the foreseeable future! If you’re curious which ones, though, I’ll have to disappoint you, since you’ll need to wait until next time to learn my top 3! Patience, young Padawan! … Wait, did they ever say that line in any of the movies? Guess it’s time to take a break from slots and rewatch “Star Wars” instead!
Committing to a Diet – My First Steps in the Whole 30
Amelie, my friend I told you about in my previous post, managed to convince me to give her diet a chance. Turns out it wasn’t just any diet on which you stay hungry for a while and then binge as much as you like. Besides, I wasn’t supposed to lose a crazy amount of weight – like 30lb in a week.
In fact, her diet is a very sensible, healthy approach to food. It’s a programme called the Whole 30 and that just about sums up what it’s about – eat whole foods for 30 days. Easy-peasy! But when I kept reading, it turned out you’re supposed to have:
- NO sugar
- NO dairy
- NO grains
- NO legumes
- NO alcohol
Well, that was a list of everything I was eating! The 30 days didn’t seem like 30 days any more but more like forever. Not only that but there were tiny things that were also vital, as tiny as salt. On the programme website, I learnt that “all iodized table salt contains sugar”. Sugar? In salt?
Once I started, I was pleasantly surprised. It wasn’t half as bad as I’d expected. I could still have my coffee in the morning, though I could have neither sugar nor milk with it. And don’t even mention Bavarian cream doughnuts.
I normally get really temped by dairy and bread but that didn’t happen. I was full eating protein at every meal and lots of healthy fats, such as coconut oil and olive oil. I ate mostly roasted fish, pork, lamb or poultry with roasted vegetables – tomatoes, mushrooms, kale, broccoli, Brussels sprouts – with garlic or onions and a lot of fresh herbs.
I also made a clean-your-fridge stew – I took everything out, chopped it up, threw it in a pot, and simmered until tender. That not only tasted delish but gave me more time to rest as I didn’t need to cook that much. Talking about rest, I stayed home every night. I had my reasons. First, I didn’t dare eat out – who knows what oil they’d put in my salad or what preservatives would be in the dressing. Second, I needed to cook a lot – and not my usual “cooking” that involved opening a can of tuna and pouring me some wine. Finally, I needed to get enough sleep – at least 10 hours of sleep, sometimes more.
Oddly enough, I didn’t crave chocolate or sweets as much as I’d expected – maybe because I got plenty of berries from the farmers’ market to snack on. Did you know that a frozen banana in your smoothie makes it all creamy and you won’t even notice there’s no dairy in it?
As for online casino games, I’m thinking of quitting them… “Wait, what?” I hear you say. Haha, I got you! I’m just pulling your leg. Of course, I wouldn’t go back on my decision so soon. I’m just shifting the focus to dieting for a while but I’ll be back to writing about gambling shortly.
Casino Games, Diets, and the Unrealistic Beauty Standards
Genie here. Remember me? I’m the one who made a commitment to playing online casino games to prove my ex-boyfriend (and myself) I am no quitter. I’m here to give you an update on how things are going.
First of all, I still enjoy casino games. Actually, I’m getting more and more into them each day. I started with roulette because anyone can place a chip on a number or colour, right. I tried slots and I must tell you some of those babies have a-mazing graphics, just mind-blowing. So are the jackpots! I haven’t had a major win yet but I’m keeping my fingers crossed. Imagine the things you could do with a couple of millions.
Also, I’m getting much better at playing blackjack, which is definitely my game of choice at the moment. I’ve played it so many times now. I even read some articles on how to improve my game, looked at strategy charts, and tried the bet behind option at live casinos. You know, live games are pretty cool as you play against a real dealer – a person, not a computer! To sum up, one could say that I’m not only keeping up my promise but actually upgrading it. But we’ll see how it goes…
Second, I’m thinking about going on a diet. Now, don’t laugh at me. Like any woman who, after a long relationship, has become single again, I am a little self-conscious. About my looks, my dating skills, and my ability to trust another human being ever again… Did I say I was a little self-conscious? Geez, try with “a lot”! But how do I confront the problem?
My girl Amelie says a diet’s the cure. Don’t know about that but I could do perfectly well without a few rolls of fat here and there, thank you very much. I try to focus on being healthy without having to even utter the hateful four-letter word but, honestly, how can I give up my beloved Dairy Milk bars? Or the glass of chardonnay in the evening? What kind of sad life would that be? What will I do when I go down to Tesco and see the hard-to-resist 3 for 2 offer at the Cadbury stand?
Besides, if you’ve seen the Bridget Jones’s Diary film or better yet read the extremely entertaining book by Helen Fielding, you’d know that women do naturally have curves and the right man would appreciate you and love you “just as you are”. Well, that goes for everything, not just body shape, so, you see, it’s definitely not my fault, it’s men’s fault. They have unrealistic expectations.
So, what do you think? Should I go on a diet and succumb to the impossible body image ideals of patriarchal society or should I stay true to myself, disregard the objectifying double standard and warm my soul with some chocolate and wine, and cheese, and pretzels? If you were in my shoes, what would you do? Let me know.
Welcome to My Sustainable Online Casino Blog
Hiya, I’m Geneva but friends call me Genie. I thought long and hard about my first post and decided to be perfectly honest with you. I broke up with my long-term boyfriend a few months ago and, surprise, surprise, I’m still recovering. He said some mean things but this one really hit home… He said I never finished anything.
I guess I must have sensed that subconsciously. Why would I have let the thought blossom in my mind otherwise? I started pondering, reminiscing… I looked back on failed relationships. I even tried blaming it on my parents – I mean, I could have a quitter gene or something. Then, I realised I was overthinking it.
I told myself, “Genie, just commit to something and don’t quit it, no matter what! That’ll show him!” I instantly came up with the perfect plan – I could commit to eating Cadbury Dairy Milk Fruit and Nut but quickly realised I was already doing that.
I decided it was only fair that one should commit to the last thing she’d already started. In my case, that was online casino games. You see, my girls took me to a casino right after my break-up and I loved it. We went there every week for a while but, since all my girls have kids or husbands or both, soon enough it was just me, myself and I. I didn’t want to frequent a land-based casino all by myself, so I brought the casino home.
So, that’s my story. I hereby commit to playing online casino games. I’m starting this blog to hold myself accountable, so to say. I don’t know how often I’ll be able to report to you but as long as I don’t quit, we’re all good. A Sustainable Online Casino Blog – yay! Wish me luck – I’ll be needing it!