Ideas for a Green Hotel

1. 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)

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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