Accor Hotels’ focus on sustainability
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Accor Hotels is now putting a lot of attention on urban farming, cutting food waste and carbon neutral buildings as part of the group’s CSR package.
Accor, which operates in 1700 cities worldwide, has an urban farming program which will see it planting 1000 vegetable gardens by 2020.
It’s already halfway there with over 500 vegetable gardens planted worldwide, from Bangkok to Rome and Sao Paulo to Kinshasa, the largest city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Hotels in the group like the Sebel Kirkton Park Hunter Valley are getting right into it. Up to 30 per cent of its menu is sourced from the hotel’s 70-acre grounds and vegetable garden, and it sources a further 50 per cent from local partners.
Over in Paris, AccorHotels has signed the city’s “Objectif 100 hectares” Charter which will see it creating 100 hectares of green walls and roofs in the French capital. That includes 33 hectares dedicated to urban farming
Hotels in the group are also using connected solutions to fight food waste in the kitchen. Already, 38 hotels in 13 countries are doing it and the results have been spectacular cutting food waste by nearly 60 per cent in the pilot hotels’ kitchens and producing a total of $772,000 in estimated annual savings.
One example is Novotel Brisbane. Partnering with technology specialists, LeanPath, it has installed a connected solution in its kitchen. It weighs food before it is put in the bin. The 296-room hotel has already reduced its food waste by 50 per cent and saved up to $400 a week after using it for a month.
The Group plans to deploy these devices worldwide and implement a system that will monitor the results obtained in all its hotels,
In France, construction is underway on the JO&JOE Paris which will be the first Low Carbon labelled hotel.
The Sofitel Sydney Darling Harbour, located in the new International Convention Centre precinct, is aiming to get an industry leading Green Star Sustainability Rating.
At the same time, Accor’s Australian hotels are using solar photovoltaic systems. Last year, they installed more than 2MW of solar, reducing the carbon footprint of hotels nationally.
All this is part of Accor’s sustainable development program, Planet 21.
It focuses on several fields of action - employees, guests, partners, local communities, food and sustainable buildings.
by Leon Gettler - 27th April 2017
