Sandymount Hotel: green policy reduces costs and boosts business

“Our Green policies have brought us valuable corporate bookings and produced dramatic savings in energy and water costs”

What the company did

Our comprehensive Green Policy at Sandymount Hotel began as a management decision to cut costs, but we now understand the wider benefits of ‘being green’. We’ve reduced our energy and water consumption, and have a waste prevention programme. The policy is driven by enthusiastic Green Team members who take the lead and encourage their colleagues to comply. Green Team members even rummage in bins to spot-check them!

Major purchases include: aerator shower heads for all our guest bathrooms which reduced the water consumption of the showers by 59%, low energy lighting throughout, and key card controlled electrics in guest bedrooms.

Waste is inevitable in a hotel, so we educate our staff about the importance of recycling and try hard to remove things from the waste stream entirely. Obsolete furniture and equipment is sold for charity. Mattresses are donated to Eco-mattress who dismantle them and recycle every component. We use rechargeable batteries and even ‘recycle’ abandoned books in our Free Wee Library. Our Green Purchasing Policy favours suppliers who use minimal packaging or will take it back for recycling or re-use. Head Chef Shane reviewed our menus to avoid food waste and we take care not to order, prepare or serve more than is required. Our vacuum packer and cooking oil filter help the kitchen team cut out unnecessary waste.

Our guests have the opportunity to participate in our Green Policy if they wish. We provide recycling bins for their use as well as offering towel and linen re-use schemes and a housekeeping opt-out programme.

The Business Impact

Our outstanding waste prevention policy recently won a prestigious Repak Pakman Award. The information we provide to our guests won us the Responsible Travel and Tourism Green Marketing Award 2015 and we are also Green Hospitality Programme’s Member of the Year 2015. All guest feedback relating to the policy has been positive and our Green accreditation has brought us valuable corporate bookings that would have been unavailable without it. Our financial investment has produced dramatic savings in energy and water costs. We’ll look for ways to be even greener in the future!

The Company

We’re a family run, independent, 3-star hotel in Dublin 4 with 87 staff. We pride ourselves on providing a quality home-from-home experience for our guests. Since we opened 60 years ago, we have always tried to be responsible members of our local community. In 2013 we adopted a comprehensive Green Policy which now influences all our operational decisions. We are determined to minimise our impact on the environment and make a greener, cleaner world for future generations. Management and staff engagement has been vital to the success of our policy. We hold silver certificates from both Tripadvisor Greenleaders and Green Hospitality Programme and we’re delighted that we recently won three awards for various aspects of our Environment Policy.