Fairmont Hotels and Resorts is well known for its efforts to “green” its operations and is now sharing its expertise with the hotel industry. An updated version of its manual, “The Green Partnership Guide: A Practical Guide to Greening Your Hotel,” details how hotels can protect the environment, increase profits and cut costs.
The first step to greening a hotel or conference space, the Guide suggests, is to conduct careful audits of all departments – from housekeeping to purchasing to management. After determining current performance from the audit results, attainable environmental goals should be set in four key areas: waste management, water conservation, energy conservation, and purchasing policy.
To purchase the guide, contact Fairmont’s Environmental Affairs Department.
Hotel professionals can now use an Internet-based benchmarking tool to assess and improve environmental performance. Managers can monitor energy use, fresh water consumption, waste management, waste water quality, purchasing programs, community relations and biodiversity protection. Managers can compare their environmental performance with that of hotels with similar facilities in three major climate zones and design a program to reduce costs and environmental impact. All individual hotel data remains confidential.
Reiner Boehme, recently retired VP of Engineering for Inter-Continental Hotels & Resorts says, “The net reductions for Inter-Continental Hotels & Resorts have been US$26 million in water and energy over 10 years. Energy, waste and water bills are a major part of a hotel’s operating costs.”
The International Hotels Environment Initiative (IHEI) developed the tool with WWF-UK with funding from Biffaward, an environment fund which uses landfill tax credits donated by Biffa Waste Services.
IHEI member hotel groups – including Six Continents Hotels, Hilton International, Scandic Hotels AB brand and Marriott International – participated in its pilot phase.
www.benchmarkhotel.com
Join the Green Hotel listserv hosted by CERES: email Sarah Raposa with “subscribe to GHI list serve” in the subject line. Please include your name, email, organization, title, and interest/involvement in the hotel industry.
CERES Green Hotel Initiative: [sorry this link is no longer available]
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