Whitbread Hotels and Restaurants, the parent company to the UK’s largest hotel chain Premier Inn, has won the Veolia Environmental Services Recycling Award for its performance diverting waste from landfill. In 2012 WHR diverted 93 per cent of all operational waste from its UK hotels and restaurants from landfill.
On track for zero waste to landfill
As part of its corporate responsibility programme “Good Together” WHR has the target of sending zero waste to landfill by 2017. In achieving a 93% diversion, WHR is on track to deliver on this target and benefit from carbon reduction and financial savings through landfill tax mitigation and bin uplifts.
WHR has implemented a number of important green initiatives to make this achievement possible including:
1. Diverting the majority of waste, including that from Premier Inn guest bedrooms, from general waste to mixed recycling
2. The national roll out of a colour coded internal and external container system to assist with the segregation of mixed recycling, food waste, glass and general waste
3. Training Premier Inn housekeeping staff to increase recycling
4. The development of a new e-learning online waste and recycling training programme to ensure all team members understand the importance of waste minimisation, how to segregate materials correctly for recycling and ongoing team member engagement.
Chris George, Head of Energy and Environment at Whitbread, said: “We’re delighted that our hard work and commitment to reducing waste and our carbon footprint has been recognised. Whitbread’s sustainability programme is one of the most ambitious in the hospitality industry and we are committed to cutting waste, energy and water right across the business. We are delivering on this commitment and, with good progress to date, we are now setting ourselves even more challenging green targets. Our action in this area is not only good for the environment but it is good for our shareholders and customers too, as it helps us to save money and run our business more efficiently.”
Reducing carbon dioxide
As well as achieving zero waste to landfill Whitbread has the target of reducing its carbon dioxide emissions by 25% by 2017 as well as achieving a relative 20% reduction in water consumption in Whitbread Hotels and Restaurant portfolio against a 2009 baseline by 2020.
For more information on Whitbread’s Good Together sustainability programme click here