1
START WITH AN AUDIT
“ The first thing any property must do is undertake a serious audit of waste ,” says Stewart Moore , founder and CEO of EarthCheck , which advises
hospitality clients on environmental practices . “ They ’ ll find it ’ s everywhere , and it ’ s costing them money .” Unmasking the major offenders can help create a roadmap to reducing excess . It also provides benchmarks and supports goal setting .
Take plastic , a particularly daunting challenge . “ Plastic Free 2022 ” is the battle cry for Six Senses Hotels Resorts Spas , which has gradually cut down on its plastic dependence but still has a way to go .
“ We took an inventory of every piece of plastic in our hotels , the spas , even the offices , and the way we ’ re measuring our progress is in terms of the number of pieces we can eliminate from the world — how many plastic straws , bottles , etc ., that we no longer use ,” says Jeff Smith , vice president of sustainability . Even after that inventory , “ we keep finding more items .”
2
WEIGH AND MEASURE
“ You can ’ t manage what you don ’ t measure ,” EarthCheck ’ s Moore likes to say . To gauge the effectiveness of an approach , tracking is essential : plastic removed from the waste stream , bottles replaced by dispensers , food scraps repurposed for compost or animal feed . Weighing trash is an obvious way to gauge progress — and potential savings , since trash haulers charge by weight .
“ Buying a scale is a good investment if you have the space in the delivery bay or back of house ,” says Xenia zu Hohenlohe , founding partner of Considerate Group , which advises hotels on sustainability efforts .
The kitchen is a hot spot : Scandic Hotels Group found that quantifying wasted food product has been essential to changing mindsets . “ When we started to measure , visualize and talk about food waste , that ’ s when we started seeing ideas start to flow , and it drove behavior change ,” says Vanessa Butani , Scandic ’ s director of sustainable business . She cautions against going too granular . “ We piloted a way of measuring food waste that got too complicated ,” she says , but it was too detailed in terms of which foods were being discarded .
January / February 2020 hotelsmag . com 25