Lancaster’s all a-buzz
The Royal Lancaster hotel has installed beehives on its roof to provide a home to half a million honey bees, due to their sharp decline in the UK. Situated next to Hyde Park, the hotel is ideally situated for them, and they will even have their very own Bee Team to care for them.
The hotel hopes to collect 40kg of honey from the hives, which will be used to serve diners in the hotel’s restaurant, Island. The wax that the bees create will be used to create candles for gifts.
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Radisson Edwardian goes for gold
The Radisson Edwardian hotel group has received a Gold Award from the London Gold 500 organisation, a group working with companies in London to reduce carbon emissions and create greener cities.
Radisson Edwardian attributed their success to staff, including a “Responsible Business Team” of 25 key employees, who worked to improve the hotel ecologically through responsible business practices.
All members of Radisson Edwardian’s staff have also been involved in more than 30 new initiatives to reduce their carbon footprint, including using low-energy light bulbs, minimising water wastage, using new suppliers engaged with greener policies and products, and employing a new recycling and reusing policy.
The group plans to introduce another 50 initiatives by the end of the year, claiming a commitment to responsible business which “stretches across every inch of the business”. They are currently the only hotel group with a Gold Award in the scheme.
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JAL and its green bottles
Japanese airline JAL is to introduce plastic wine bottles, in a bid to reduce C02 emissions. The bottles, made of ecologically friendly PET (polyethylene terephthalate) are soon to replace glass on JAL’s flights.
The plastic bottles are one seventh of the weight of a glass bottle the same size. JAL’s aim is to reduce the overall weight of its aircrafts to reduce fuel consumption and CO2 emissions, however, the airline assures that the flavour of the wine will not be compromised by the PET.
The switch to PET is just one of a number of green initiatives that JAL is introducing to reduce its carbon footprint – it inaugurated its first Eco-Jet (decorated with a green origami plane motif to increase climate change awareness) in June 2008, and has ordered more than 80 of Boeing’s economic 787 aircrafts, replacing 90 less efficient models.
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IHG and National Geographic work together for the environment
Intercontinental Hotel Group (IHG) extended its partnership with the National Geographic Society to include global initiatives around environmental and cultural responsibility.
Employees around the world will participate in responsible business workshops to learn more about green initiatives, while hotel managers and chief executives from Intercontinental and National Geographic are setting up a responsible business advisory board to plan for the future.
The Intercontinental initiatives supported by National Geographic will help hotel general managers and their teams sustain and enhance the geographical character of locations where Intercontinental has hotels.
As part of its green efforts, IHG has also set up a new online tool called Green Engage to help hotel managers reduce energy consumption. Last year, Interncontinental also launched Innovation Hotel, an online example of what a future hotel might look like if it used new green technology.
The partnership between Intercontinental and National Geographic started in 2007 with two global photography competitions, to which guests and readers were invited to capture and share their travel experiences. Then in 2008, Intercontinental sponsored National Geographic’s All Roads Film Festival that showcased movies by indigenous filmmakers.
