Ideas for a Green Hotel

“we are all temporary guests in time”.... “The development towards a new society based on nature’s conditions affects us all , but our guests should not notice the difference “ Roland Nilsson,Chairman ,Scandic Hotel Group The Scandic Hotel Group bases their environmental hotel policy on the precepts of the “The Natural Step” organisation “environmental innovation is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration” Edwin Datschefski “a thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. a thing is wrong when it tends otherwise” Aldo Leopold each day more solar energy falls to earth than the total amount of energy the planet´s 6 billion inhabitants would consume in 25 years. US Dept of Energy “waste is lost profit” Edwin Datschefski “a good design goes beyond appearances” Axel Thallemer ““the world we have is the product of our way of thinking” Albert Einstein “tomorrow will be less” Philippe Starck 1. Use only PET1 recyclable plastics in all purchases within the hotel 2. Buy products, whenever possible, from companies offering fairly traded or organically-produced products eg. “ The Natural Collection” www.naturalcollection.com. eg. paints, garden equipment, candles, long shelf-life foodstuffs 3. Install web links for the hotel on line terminals for guest use to interesting and challenging environmental web sites such as www.cat.org, www.globalff.org, www.mbdc.com, www.carboncalculator. org, www.gobmallorca.com, www.forumforthefuture.org.uk, www.plantatuarbol.com,www.worldlandtrust.org ( english and spanish)

www.panda.org ( WWF ), www.fairtrade.org.uk, www.bestfootforward.com www.rachel.org, www.edenproject.com, www.seawatergreenhouse.com, www.sustdev.org 4. Buy locally - lower transport effect on environment - lower cost - support for local industries 70% of money spent by tourists staying in 3rd world resorts leaves the host country via multinational tourist corpns., airlines and global goods and services providers The distribution of 1kg of apples from New Zealand creates its own weight in CO2. Food tranportation on a global basis massively increases CO2 emissions. 5. Buy recycled - look for the mobius loop which means that a product has been recycled. Furthermore suppliers can be “encouraged” to take back and recycle/reuse packaging materials in order to secure future orders. 6. Encourage use of the public transport system by guests with information on trains and buses via literature and on-line terminals One litre of fuel will carry a person 7km in a large car, 9km in a small car, 50kms in a 40 seater bus and 60kms in a 300 seater train 7. Recycle “grey water” within the hotel perimeter using reed beds. The treated water can then be recycled back in to the non-potable water supply in the hotel and the landscaping irrigation system Furthermore chlorinated swimming pool water can be recycled by removing the chlorine by bubbling air through it from a porous pipe irrigation tube for a few days linked to an air compressor. 8. Offer a competition to hotel guests a trip to “the eden project” in Cornwall for 2, once a year, via Nueva Europa travel of Palma de Mallorca, ecotourist specialists for Mallorca 9. For each interior planter specified : a conservation policy of “green gearing” : by a factor of 100 : each interior plant display purchased or rented will provide for the purchase of 500m2 of RainForest in one of the following World Land Trust projects Ecuador, Amazon, Uganda, Costa Rica, Phillipines, Belize 10. carbon neutral hotel : given figures for energy loads, carbon emissions

from heating systems etc.,we can calculate the area of Rainforest needed

to be preserved in order to render the hotel totally carbon neutral to the environment. In an office context c. 13m2 of dense non-mature

RainForest will lock up the emissions produced by 1 office workstation given average energy loads of 20w / m2 for lighting, 40w / m2 for power load and 50w / m2 for air conditioning, totalling 110w /m2. ( CoP= 2.50) 11. Install deciduous shading screens using vegetation over glazed roofs instead of textile or synthetic solar blinds. Install semi-evergreen plant screening - eg. bamboos - for lateral shading in summer and thermal protection in winter adjacent to exposed glass elevations - eg. entrance atria 12. Install roof-top solar panels. In the UK a 1kw domestic solar panel can save 1 tonne of CO2 emissions per annum 13. Heating - in the UK residential context a 1% decrease in the air temperature thermostat setting averages a 10% reduction in energy costs. A similar gearing might be achieved in a hotel setting. The reduction in temperature will also reduce water loss / strees from interior planting 14. Plant species of plants that encourage birds and butterflies . Install discreet bird nesting boxes 15. Apply environment friendly mulches to the topsoil such as “spent mushroom compost” or local almond shells from nearby processing factories. Both are more environmentally friendly than pine bark 16. Explore the possibilities of having the entire hotel area declared a conservation zone. This might encourage the possibilities of a “green” neighbourhood watch scheme for the care and protection of the planting in exposed street - side locations 17. Make the planting pallette as much as is practicable towards native Catalan and Balearic species. Water conservation and regional patriotism will be directly rewarded 18. Install water saving devices in hotel rooms - such as low flow showerheads, sink aerators and toilets

19. Create a second-tier of hotel rooms - say one floor as a pilot exercise - in which progressively more and more ecological and green products are incorporated - organic cotton bedlinen and towels, “re-use” towel and sheet cards , Ecover soaps and dispensers, energy efficient lighting, lead-free painted surfaces, natural fibre carpeting and soft furnishings. Further ecosavings can be achieved by buying concentrated cleaning products from Henkel Ecolab and diluting on-site. Scandic Hotels reduced their output of packaging by 8 tonnes in the first year and their wastage of soap and shampoo by 30 tonnes for the same period. 20. Use organic products for the exterior and interior planting - seaweed and naturally occurring fulvic and humic acids to ameliorate the topsoil on site and improve micro-organism activity 21. Use biological pest control agents such as ladybirds and lacewings in favour of lethal chemical pesticides. Carry out hand weeding or use weed burners ( propane ) See “Creative Sustainable Gardening” by Diana Anthony, published by CAT . ISBN1898049238 22. Use Coir composts for interior and exterior planting instead of Peat. Water absorbing and retaining properties of coir is superior, it breaks down more slowly than peat and suffers less from compression 23. Design and implement a herb garden to supply fresh herbs to the kitchen growing as many native herbs of Cataluña and the Balearics as possible 24. Compost all possible organic materials from the kitchen other than meat and cooked foods. Compost all garden waste. Add layers of cardboard - shredded - periodically . Landfilling green waste in fact is especially pointless as it produces methane rather than CO2 which is 3 x more damaging as a greenhouse gas 25. Purchase and serve organic wines and beers within the hotel restaurant and bar networks. 26. Promote a comprehensive office strategy for recycling and reuse - energy star monitors, photocopying on both sides, staple less staplers, recycling toner cartridges, avoiding screen savers etc 27. Set up a car sharing pool for hotel staff - this will reduce demand

on hotel car park space, save staff disposeable incomes or hotel travel costs and benefit the environment. 38% of car journeys carry 1 person, 34% carry only 2 persons. Cars contribute 20% of UK total CO2 emissions. 30% of Body Shop International’s 600 employees at their head office in the UK use the in-house car sharing scheme, taking 100 vehicles off the road 28. Register waste items with a local “Waste Exchange” to release the inherent value in them. eg. hotels generate immense quantities of surplus newspapers - these can be recycled by compression to form “paper logs” for combustion or reused as thermal insulation in cavity walls. Similarly operate intra departmental trading of surplus’ to minimise purchasing of new materials - the kitchen’s may have a waste stream of containers that could function most effectively as document storage for the accounts dept. 29. Offer special “Stay 1 extra night” packages that trigger a hotel donation to save 1 acre of RainForest in a project location of the guests choice via David Bellamy’s World Land Trust. Marginal cost to hotel €35.00. Marginal revenue: Full room rate. With the future addition of web cameras guests would enjoy seeing sunset over the cloudforests of the Jocotoco Reserve overlooking the Pacific in Ecuador as they decided to extend their stay on web screens on-line around the Reception 30. Install a modest greenhouse to act as a plant store and plant hospital / quarentine area for interior planting - this will greatly assist in the plant recycling process 31. Carry out a green audit over time to include an assessment on the basis of “cyclic/solar/safe” criteria for all products and services - for further reference... “The Total Beauty of Sustainable Products” Edwin Datschefski. ISBN 2-88046-545-1 Or contact the World Land Trust to enquire about Green Audits www.worldlandtrust.org 32. Ensure that the hotel web site and all in-house promotional literature to guests states clearly that all ingredients entering the hotel food chain are free of genetically modified ingredients 33. Join the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales,U.K. They provide possibly the best ideas and products and publications for “going

green” and being sustainable from a practical and “DIY” perspective www.cat.org.uk 34. Install a green roof of hardy wildflowers on the hotel roof - this will serve to landscape the view across the roof as well as providing a functional purpose of thermal insulation in summer and winter. For this application Grodan rockwool type material is ideal to minimise weight loadings. 35. Create an environmental noticeboard on the intranet to facilitate environmental suggestions from all members of staff. Effective environmental polices need commitment from staff. This can highlight certain areas periodically - Rover cars for instance sent an energy management newsletter to all its employees at Longbridge with simple energy saving tips which resulted in actual energy savings of Pounds1m. in 6 months 36. Extend the above - in edited and highlighted format - in to the hotel newsletter provided for guests. This could have the strategic objective of creating interest in the landscaping amongst the hotel guest population. It could also feature on the regularly updated hotel web site - to provide news of seasonal changes of evergreen planting, flowering cycles of perennials and routine maintenance procedures such as pruning. It is amazing how often people seek information from commercial property landscape contractors on impulse when on-site to problem solve their own garden maintenance 37. Provide botanical garden type plant labels for interior and exterior planting 38. Incorporate a branded water retaining polyacrylamide in to the soil mix - water retaining crystals that absorb 200 times their weight in water and allow the roots to seek out the jelly globules and tap off the water as needed in times of water stress. An organic growth enhancer such as Nitrozyme can be incorporated in to the water absorbed by the crystals for a “turbo” take-up of minerals and nutrients

Available from Viva Verde s.l. as agents for UK based Growth Technology Ltd. under the trade name “Watersorb” (more available > www.growthtechnology.com) 39. If the hotel water supply for planting is relatively free from salts especially Calcium, install a porous pipe sub-soil automatic irrigation system ( pipe fabricated from recycled car tyres ) 40. Put a copy of “Mallorca Sostenible” in each room ! Contact Cristina Barchi on buzondesugerencias@mallorcasostenible.com or Jaume Perrelló on recursos@gobmallorca.com