We continue our blog with another post on the hotel industry, this time discussing Mumbai’s 5 star hotel Meluha the Fern, which commissioned cBalance to provide an analysis of its ecological footprint and consumption for the years of 2011-12. Meluha the Fern is a business hotel located in a hot and humid climatic zone (see our last blog post for more information on the different climatic zones) with 141 rooms. Laundry and waste water treatment (aerobic) is off-site, and the average room tafiff is Rs. 6400.
Greenhouse Gas Inventory:
As is evident from the graph, the vast majority of emissions come from electricity generation (84.45%). Laundry is the second largest source (3.88%), followed by PNG (3.48%, dairy (2.49%, and meat (2.27%).
The total footprint of the hotel was 4224.47 tCO2e, with 0.12 tCO2e per overnight stay, 0.34 tC02e per square meter, and 29.9 tCO2e per room per year.
Compared to its peers, Meluha the Fern is in the top 2 percentile for overall energy efficiency, top 4 percentile for hotels in the Hot & Humid climatic zone, top 9 percentile for all 5 star hotels, and top 2 percentile for all business hotels.
Results:
The total CO2e for the reporting period was 1263 tCO2e, with 919.34 tCO2e from guestrooms and 343.23 tCO2e from meetings. The carbon footprint per occupied room on a daily basis was 27.2 kgCO2e and 94.0 kgCO2e per area of meeting space.
The carbon footprint of fuel usage overwhelmingly came from PNG (69%), followed by LPG (18%) and diesel (13%). The cost was even more lopsided, with 96% from PNG and 2% each from LPG and diesel.
Carbon emissions was not the only performance indicator we analyzed, however; water consumption was also evaluated. 29069 kiloliters of water was used by Meluha the Fern (resulting in associated emissions of 16.1 tCO2e). Most of it came by tanker (56%), and domestic water (48%), flushing (25%), and the cooling towers (23%) were responsible for nearly all of its use.
cBalance also analyzed Meluha the Fern’s food waste, which totaled at 112.78 tonnes (resulting in 2.9 tCO2e emissions), 90% of which went to the piggeries, with the remaining 10% being composted.
Laundry is another significant contributor to Meluha the Fern’s ecological footprint. There were 639.96 tons of laundry with an associated emissions of 163.83 tCO2e (260 kgCO2e per ton). The tent card, however, helped save 2% of laundry, meaning 1460 kWh of electricity, 480 KL of water, 700 I of furnace oil, and 4.4 tCO2e GHG emissions per year.
The following table and graph illustrate Meluha the Fern’s solid waste management:
Most of the avoided emissions were from metals (44% and paper 42%).
Meluha the Fern has also achieved large savings from its water practices. The campus area is 1046 square meters, while the rainwater capture area is 3130.55 square meters. 7% of capture rainwater is reused (360 KL per year), and 93% of captured rainwater is recharged into the ground (4782 KL per year).
Energy savings result from Meluha the Fern’s choices of lighting equipment, as is shown by the following data:
Meluha the Fern also uses more sustainable forms of indoor cooling, with 10 split AC units (16 tonnes) and 50% of tonnage rated as 3 star equipment or above.
There are other areas as well where Meluha the Fern is able to save energy. 24% of the total pumping capacity comes from VFD pumps. Measures are taken to reduce refrigeration, 6% of the BUA is naturally lit, all of the windows are double-glazed, and all of the water pipes are insulated. 29% of the BUA is covered by BMS (building management systems), and the occupancy controlled area is 49% of the low traffic BUA area.
Some other notable sustainability measures included induction stoves for buffet counters, three self-cooking centers from Rational, a four bin method of trash segregation (at the source), no straws, paper napkins, or coasters, and glass bottles provided for water rather than bottled water (which aren’t filled unless asked for). Lastly, email usage is mandated and recycled paper is used for all stationary.
Other positives were that the data collection in housekeeping and engineering departments was excellent, and all staff members were very knowledgeable about sustainability initiatives within their departments.
Areas for improvement:
There were no sustainability initiatives involving guests, and the percentage of social development activities was very less (less than 1% of total man hours). There were not any norms for the use of organic food, either.
The Coconut Lagoon Heritage Resort in Kumarakom, Kottayam district, Kerala commissioned the Green Signal to provide it with an ecolabel rating, which was determined to be 4 bars out of 5.
The ecolabelling process is based on these three areas of investigation, verification, and documentation: GHG inventory assessment of the hotel (with respect to energy, water, waste, mobility, and materials), the conservation practices (of materials, waste, water, and energy) within the hotel, and the sustainability initiatives promoted/operated by the hotel.
Consolidated Activity Data and GHG Inventorying – FY 2011-12
Total annual GHG emissions: 1210.9 MT CO2e/year
Total annual overnight stays for FY 2011-2012 is 10,138, and the GHG emissions per overnight stay (all emission scopes) is 119 kg C02e/overnight stay:
Only taking into account Scope 1 and 2 emissions, the GHG emissions per stay are 106 kg CO2e/overnight stay, meaning that Coconut Lagoon has lower GHG emission than 87% of 5 star hotels in the Warm & Humid Agro-Climatic Zone.
Positive Environmental Impacts
Waste Reduction and Management
Waste Reduction:
-Paper reductions – newspapers aren’t delivered to each room; rather there’s common reading material provided in congregation areas. Reusable cloth bags are used as bin liners in guest rooms.
-Plastic reductions – Use of plastic packing for supplies coming onto the property by vendorsis prohibited (vendors are required to package material in reusable containers/jars). Bottled water suppliers are asked to take back empty PET bottles, and soap/shampoo containers are made from terracotta.
-Other – Organic paddy cultivates eliminates the use of fertilizer and pesticides and reduces water use.
Low Embodied Carbon/recycled materials:
-Recycled paper is used for all communication materials, guest amenities, and restaurant menus.
-The on-site school for the staff’s children is built from recycled PET bottles.
-90% of BUA is comped of re-assembled ‘Tharavad’ houses.
-All laundry detergent, soaps, and shampoos are biodegradable (so that wastewater treatment plants work properly). Organic pesticides are used rather than conventional ones.
Biodegradable/non-biodegradable waste:
-Cooking waste is processed by conversion into methane by a biogas plant.
-Dry leaves are composted in bamboo bins using slurry from from the biogas as a bio-catalyst, and the resulting compost is used for farming.
-Coconut husks and other organic materials not suitable for biogas processing are composted on-site and then used for farming.
-Non-biodegradable waste is segregated and sold to scrap dealers for recycling; near 100% recycling is achieved for the majority of waste categories.
-Paper waste is recycled for envelopes, and construction material refuse is used for the construction of walking pathways. Old cloth refuse and bed linen are donated to local orphanages.
Water related practices
-Wastewater is treated by a sewage treatment plant using Expanded Granular Sludge Bed Reactor (EGSBR) and filtration technology and the effluent is used for gardening purposes.
-Push-taps are installed in staff quarters and messes and guest bathrooms are equipped with dual-cistern flush systems reduce water consumption. Instead of a conventional lawn, an indigenous variety of Buffalo Grass is used that requires less water, curbs evaporation, and enhances groundwater recharge.
-Rainwater harvesting means that Coconut Lagoon’s operation during monsoon season is entirely water self-sufficient (additional water–2700 kilos–is sourced from tankers only during the summer months of March to June).
Energy related practices
Energy efficiency:
-Lighting is more efficient because CFL bulbs are used in the gardens, and LED and T5, T8 tubelight fixtures with electronic ballots are used elsewhere.
-HVAC – the use of 30 TR VRF systems account for 22% of the total tonnage, and 28 split-unit systems of 2.2 TR capacity have an EER greater than 2.92.
-Has naturally lit and naturally ventilated restaurants; all guest rooms and bathrooms are designed to maximize natural light and ventilation.
-Capacitor banks are installed to achieve power factor improvement; power saver technology is used in all 50 rooms.
Renewable Energy Practices
-A solar thermal network supplies the hot water requirement (13,000 liters per day) for 50 guest rooms and the kitchen.
-A 2kW Solar PV on one of the guest transport boats comprises 0.50% of total connected load.
-A biogas-run cooker, running on methane from the biogas plant with a calorific value equivalent to 17kgs of LPG a day, can cook 80 kgs of rice per day. Excess methane from the biogas plant and EGSB reactors not used for cooking purposes is used to power street lamps that would have a combined load of 500 watts under normal conditions.
Sustainability Practices
Food Procurement Practices
-59.47% of annual food procurement cost comes from within the state, and 0.46% annual food procurement is spent on organic food.
Economic, Social, and Environmental Development Practices
-80% of unskilled labor comes from the community, and cloth laundry bags, paper bags, envelopes from newspapers, and terracotta waste bins are all manufactured locally.
-Coconut Lagoon has adopted two local schools and financially supports their maintenance work, station, and study materials and resources.
-Waste bins are provided for the 180 families (1 per 10 families) in the village.
-Dry waste from community bins is collected weekly for recycling, and cloth bags are distributed in the local community every 3 months as part of a ‘Plastic Eradication Programme.’ CFL bulbs are distributed within the community as well for household use.
-Staff members lead monthly clean up drives and conduct periodic environmental education classes in adopted local schools (students also take field trips to study Coconut Lagoon’s green practices). Earth Hour awareness programs are also held within the local community, as are community tree plantation drives.
Engagement in Sustainable Tourism Initiatives
-Guests are encouraged to participate in biodiversity appreciation initiatives, and an in-house naturalist at the Interpretation Centre can educate them on the ecology of the region.
-Guests are also encourage to participate in the organic rice plantation and cultivation activities as well as the tree plantation initiatives in the surrounding area.
Biodiversity Preservation Initiatives
-Coconut Lagoon has a total of 1101 trees representing 90 different species on its property.
-It also has a butterfly garden with 17 different species and a fish sanctuary with 44 different species.
-Mangrove saplings have been planted along the waterside as an effort to restore rapidly disappearing mangroves as well as spread awareness about their importance to the community.
This article is a simple “sustainability guide for the hospitality sector in India”. It will give an overview of the methods that can be taken by a hotel to chart a performance based sustainable growth path.
While a lot of hotels are taking positive measures to become environmentally friendly most of them are ad-hoc steps undertaken without any long term plan and data to substantiate the investment thus preventing hotels from being able to fully leverage their benefits. The main objective of these exercises is to be visible to the customers and project themselves as a green brand. This has led to “greenwashing” becoming a norm in the industry. Greenwashing can be defined as “The act of misleading consumers regarding the environmental practices of a company or the environmental benefits of a product or service”. The trap of greenwashing may enable firms to get short term returns on small investments but with a constant evolution of the knowledge base among customers, it compromises the integrity and the long term sustainability of the brand
Over time, green practices in the hospitality industry will become a baseline requirement, HCMI stands for Hotel Carbon Measurement initiative and is an effort to unite the hotel industry in order to calculate and communicate carbon emissions from guest rooms and meeting space in a uniform way. It is a simple method, available free of cost and a great starting point for any hotel looking to wet its toes on the path towards sustainability. It was developed by industry, for industry and will help customers especially corporate customers get accurate and consistent carbon footprint information from hotels globally. It is being pioneered by The International Tourism Partnership, World Travel & Tourism Council and 23 global hotel companies including well know ones such as Hyatt, Marriott, Hilton etc. It requires hotels to report emissions from only three key sectors which make up a bulk of the emissions namely: Fuel, Electricity and Outsourced Laundry. This will enable conscious individuals and companies to compare the basic sustainability of hotels globally and make informed decisions on how to spend their money; particularly as the cost of non-renewable energy continues to rise, regulatory pressure increases, and consumers become more demanding. Therefore, hotels with business models that revolve around green practices will have the strongest opportunity to achieve a competitive advantage by being ahead of the emerging sustainability curve. It would need hotels to move from a standard practice of proclaiming sustainability through words to a holistic approach that quantifies and certifies the operational performance of the hotel. As expected the international hospitality industry has taken the lead on this front. While doing so they have realized the benefits of these steps not only as a tool to better their image but one that also has a significant effect on their efficiency and as a result on their bottom line. This has resulted in the laggards in the industry having to pay dearly by spending large amounts of money to retrofit their hotels just to be competitive.
With the investment in India’s travel and tourism sector expected to grow at 8.8 % to INR 2,827.5 billion (US$ 63.7 billion) until 2021 there is a huge opportunity for hotels in India to learn from the industry around the world and invest early in a performance based system of sustainability that will help the hotel continuously improve its efficiency and performance.
The biggest challenge for the sector is that it is fragmented with the exception of a few big players. The smaller hotels are unable to visualize the larger impact of their activities. With limited knowledge and capability to invest in technological interventions it is absolutely necessary for them to accurately calculate the cost and resultant savings of various interventions so as to maximize their ROI. It is also equally important for these hotels to be able to accurately calculate and convey the savings and benefits to potential customers in a quantitative and qualitative manner to enable them to make informed decisions.
With a vision of enabling all: small & medium to large chain hotels across the country to undertake a wholesome approach to sustainability in a cost effective manner, outlined below is a realm of strategic steps that a hotel can take to put itself on the path to sustainable low carbon development.
Figure 1: The Sustainability roadmap
Measure your current performance: This is a process of defining the baseline for your hotel. It will help you see where you are currently placed and accordingly set goals. This does not require a hotel to have taken significant steps towards becoming sustainable. There are several frameworks that help you measure your baseline such as HCMI and The Green Signal Ecolabel.
green signal <Sustainability guide for the hospitality sector in India>
Hotels looking to get deeper into the realm of sustainability there is the Green Signal ecolabel which not only enables a hotel to measure its carbon footprint but also helps it measure sustainability parameters in energy conservation, water conservation, waste reduction and Social economic involvement. The method for measuring the carbon footprint of a hotel is also far more rigorous and includes parameters in Fuel, Electricity, Outsourced Laundry, Water, Waste Water, Corporate travel & F&B. This enables an organization to view its sustainability not only from the perspective of carbon but also from other key parameters like water and waste. Such a holistic study of a hotels sustainability enables it to prioritize areas of focus and set specific targets for improvement.
Certify your sustainability initiatives:. A common way of certification around the world has been in the form of ecolabels or other similar certifications from independent third parties. There exist in India quite a few certifications like LEED, GRIHA, IGBC etc for new development projects as well as a few international ecolabels especially for hotels. These standards are helpful to some extent but they fall short of providing a holistic solution to organizations as they are static, intent and compliance based rather than performance based. These methods advise you on what targets are to be achieved but do not help you select the appropriate interventions specifically for your project that will help you achieve those targets in a cost effective manner. A simple compliance system is not sufficient to accurately measure and convey the savings and the effect of the efficiency and conservation measures undertaken for the project to potential customers. The Green Signal Ecolabel while also providing a framework for sustainability measurement certifies applicants not only based on pre-specified targets but also on their relative performance to their peers in the sector. This is done by benchmarking the performance to specific peers who fall in the same sub groups such as hotel type, agro climatic zone and service grade. This encourages hotels to continually strive for improvement and keep pace with competitors, which improves the overall market stock. A survey conducted by BEE in partnership with USAID the results of which are shown below tells us that an average 5 star hotel can save between Rs.1-5 cr/year and abate between 500 to 5000 tonnes of CO2e/year depending on the agro climatic zone and size if it improves its energy efficiency to be in the Top 25% percentile.
Figure 3: co2 emissions of hotels by service grade
Figure 4: co2 emissions of hotels by service grade
Leverage the certification: After certification, hotels can take advantage of the credibility to reach out to current and potential customers and project themselves as a brand on the path towards sustainability. This includes branding all publicity collateral with the ecolabel, publishing a sustainability report, getting featured and listed on eco friendly travel portals frequented by conscious tourists. Hotels can also get innovative by initiatives such as conveying key performance data to guests in a non invasive manner at the appropriate point of contact such as ‘Our sensor taps save 3500l/year equivalent to 5% of our total water consumption shown in restrooms’, or using department specific data for staff training and internal goal setting. They can also go the extra mile and offer certified carbon neutral holidays to their guests.
Create a sustainability roadmap: Once a hotel has measured its baseline, taken some steps towards sustainability and gotten themselves certified they can opt for a in-depth analysis which will help them chart a short, medium and long term sustainability plan for their organization. Energy, Waste and Water audits can be carried out to assess resource intensive hot spots and deep opportunities for savings that can be harnessed by using eco-friendly alternatives for key products along with appropriate staff training. Innovative tools such as Marginal Green House Gases(GHG) Abatement Cost Curve (MACC) modelling can help prioritize green investments based on growth and investment patterns. MACC analysis is designed to discover the most cost-effective means of mitigating climate change impact by identifying the low-hanging fruit alternatives that must be pursued before embarking upon token or capital-intensive programs. MACC will help maximize tonnes of co2e abated for every Rs. spend and can be hotel or hotel chain specific or even community specific.
Monitor and manage sustainability: Once the opportunities have been identified and targets have been set a hotel will need to track its progress towards these goals. This can be done by empowering an individual or team within the organization to be the champions for change who will monitor and track progress. Cloud based carbon footprinting tools such as Footprint Reporter powered by an India specific emission factor database can also be effective methods to track sustainability projects and automatically generate statistics and reports which can help an organization effectively monitor its progress.
Each of these topics will be taken up in detail in the subsequent editions of this article.
In conclusion it is imperative for the hospitality industry to quickly realize that with increasing choice tourists are getting more discerning and environmentally conscious and are looking for brands with credible differentiators. Despite first-time guests basing their decisions on location, amenities and service, inclusive but non-intrusive sustainability initiatives have been shown to create positive perceptions in guests resulting in a higher recall rate. This results in increased customer loyalty as well as higher brand value of the hotel. To keep attracting tourists especially foreign tourists whose numbers are growing at 7.2% CAGR, hotels need to tap into new customer bases and create differentiators for themselves. Developing a short term and long term performance based sustainability strategy will enable an organization to identify a proactive low-carbon development pathway to be future ready.
For comments or feedback contact me on: udit@cbalance.in ( www.cbalance.in)
