The City of Sydney has confirmed funds of up to $10,000 are available for businesses to enrol in the internationally recognised EarthCheck Certified program and to create an ‘energy performance action plan’.
The quest for energy efficiency is available to organisations to undertake energy ratings and audits for the first time.
The investment into sustainable tourism is likely to pay off, with a world-first Griffith University study of more than 1,000 EarthCheck Certified hotels and resorts around the world revealing proven financial returns on investment for those hotels which measured and managed their operational performance through the program.
Seven years after joining EarthCheck, the Radisson Blu Hotel in Sydney has dramatically reviewed its own energy efficiency, water conservation and waste plans.
Changes have resulted in the saving of six Olympic-sized swimming pools worth of water, greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to taking 601 cars off the road and enough energy to support 400 average four-person households.
“It’s mind blowing. Every year you look at the year before and say, gee, there is a lot of opportunity to improve,” said Radisson Blu Sydney hotel manager Peter Rugg when the results of the Griffith University survey were released[1].
“Hotels are small worlds. There are so many parties: suppliers, food produce, packaging,” he said, adding “we impact so many areas of all sorts of industries.”
The decision to join the EarthCheck program came as part of a company-wide approach to enact environmental changes to the hotel, which has reported savings of more than $700,000 dollars over seven years.
“It does come down to the bottom line. There’s a massive bottom line positive impact. Looking at reductions in water usage and electricity usage, they come hand in hand as benefiting the business and the environment,” said Mr Rugg.
The EarthCheck report covered 99 datasets for Australian accommodation businesses over seven years. Over the period member organisations reported an average annual reduction of electricity of up to 6 per cent, resulting in a total average annual saving of $2,476,010.
For water, the average annual reduction rate was 0.4 per cent, while average waste production was reduced by 10.6 per cent each year, equating to a total average saving of $1,097,323 across all Australian properties over the seven years.
“Hotels generally share the same operational challenges, but at different levels depending on size,” said Stewart Moore, CEO and founder of EarthCheck.
“Our research incorporated urban hotels, resort leisure-based hotels and residential hotels, all of which signed up to the EarthCheck benchmarking and certification process.”
“They are required to collect data across the hotel and have it audited…we have third party auditors to check on site. We then have a software program that takes all that data in and can provide them with reports on their operation within their sector, region and also around the world,” Mr Moore said.
For more information about this program or how to apply, please contact: info@earthcheck.org
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About EarthCheck
EarthCheck is a global business advisory group specialising in sustainability. In the past decade, EarthCheck have supported more than 360 research projects with a total value of $260 million. Its flagship product, EarthCheck Certified, is the world’s leading scientific benchmarking and certification program for the Travel & Tourism industry and has helped clients in more than 70 countries realise over $500 million in operational savings.
Twitter: @earthcheck_
Facebook: @earthcheck
Instagram: @earthcheck
Media contacts:
Carla Adams, EarthCheck Communication and Engagement
Mob: +61 434 676 279 Email: carla.adams@earthcheck.org
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