Best Practice: waste management
Managing ever increasing amounts of waste is becoming a top priority for hotels across the Middle East, resulting in the adoption of new technology and waste flow management techniques. Hotelier Middle East talks to some of the most waste efficient hotels and suppliers across the region who realise that when it comes to waste, less is definitely more
very week, throughout the Middle East, hotels and restaurants are throwing away thousands of tonnes of food and packaging waste. Over the course of a working day waste collects, builds up and flows throughout a hotel as it is collected from service areas and moved into bin or storage areas to await collection and transportation by private companies.
According to Mil-Tek, one of the largest manufacturers and suppliers of waste balers and presses in the Middle East, this flow of waste is one of the biggest challenges facing hotels attempting to balance the demands for space in hotel service and operational areas.
“As flow waste fluctuates throughout a hotel during busy and slow periods, many hotels find that they can’t control their waste properly. If they only have a small waste room, and a set number of bins, depending on how busy they are then sometimes they will be overflowing and sometimes they are being under used,” says Mil-Tek Middle East export manager Darren Laird.
“When a hotel is looking at handling waste, they should be attempting to try and eliminate any unnecessary internal logistics that exist in the property. For example, if you have a busy hotel kitchen that is producing say 100 bags of rubbish per day, then you will have staff moving through, into and out of the waste area all day,” says Laird.
“Not to mention the space that is needed to store that waste before it’s moved around, having to move bags back and forth around the back of house is unhygienic,” he adds.
GARBAGE GOVERNANCE
Therefore, how a hotel sets up its waste management system, and how it is able to manage the ‘flow’ of waste throughout the property becomes a major factor in basic hygiene standards and best practice for food and guest safety. This has now become, according to Hans Hammer, sales and marketing manager of the Dutch waste management company Rendisk, one of the major issues that hotels in the Middle East approach him about.
“Usually, one of the major problems around the world for waste management is manpower. However, in the Middle East, where labour is relatively available and inexpensive, the major issue is instead hygiene,” explains Hammer.
“This is the one major area in which hotels are looking to improve, as they try to adhere to increasingly rigorous hygiene standards, as well as to prepare themselves for any possible future regulations from regulatory bodies,” he adds.
An example of waste management regulations imposed in the region is the Nadafa Programme from the Centre of Waste Management in Abu Dhabi. Launched in the 2010, the programme is designed to impose financial tariffs on the levels of waste produced by companies in the emirate, a charge equivalent to AED 225 (US $61) for each tonne of waste produced per year.
For any large hotel producing hundreds of tonnes of waste per year, this is a charge that can quickly add up, in addition to existing and already significant manpower and storage costs.
As a result, according to American food waste disposal system manufacturer Insinkerator’s business development manager Mohamed Karam, “the major waste considerations for hotels tend to be centred around any existing or even potential local regulations and laws laid down by the municipality.
“However, when considering the machinery they need, hotels should also bear in mind the size of the waste area available, in contrast to the average amount of waste produced on site. Other considerations are labour costs, the level of staff and training needed to operate any machinery, as well as other costs such as the amounts of water and electricity required,” adds Karam.
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TRASH TECHNOLOGY
To surmount this array of problems, hotels are increasingly turning to a growing range of modern waste management technology and procedures including waste collection cages, sorting rooms and waste compactors.
This has allowed hotels to potentially reduce the number of waste collections throughout the week, as recyclable waste is sorted out of the system and collected separately, with any remaining waste compacted to reduce the need for storage space and the number of necessary collections.
One hotel group which has been making particular efforts to manage its levels of waste is Hilton Worldwide, which recently set itself the goal of reducing overall waste across the group by 20% within five years, as well as a 20% cut in CO2 emissions and 10% in water usage.
The Hilton Abu Dhabi recently ran a range of initiatives including staff and guest awareness programmes on the importance of separating recyclable and disposable rubbish, a desert cleaning drive and even a recycling fashion show where staff were asked to create outfits made of recycled materials.
However, Hilton Abu Dhabi‘s environment, health, safety and hygiene manager Evangelos Karakoulias explains that “while Hilton is pushing its hotels to maximise its waste reductions as much as possible, the ability of each hotel to recycle its waste is really dependent on the space and resources it has available.”
“I believe that if the Hilton Abu Dhabi was able to recycle food waste, then we could increase our 20% reduction target to somewhere closer to 40%. However, it is difficult to find the space necessary to operate this kind of programme as well as find a use for the quantities of fertilizer that we would be producing,” admits Karakoulias.
GOING GREEN
One hotel that has been able to establish a successful food waste recycling scheme is the Westin Abu Dhabi Golf Resort and Spa, which has recently been piloting a machine that can turn food waste into a highly effective fertiliser in only 10 hours.
Westin Abu Dhabi director of engineering Sebastien Weyer explains that the machine was introduced as a result of the emirate’s Nadafa Programme from the Centre Of Waste Management in Abu Dhabi, with a pilot programme scheduled to see what impact it had on the hotel’s efforts to reduce waste.
“As a result, we have been able to produce a nutrient rich fertilizer, which is 93% organic matter that we can use across our resort. This, therefore, becomes an additional cost saving measure as our landscaping team no longer needs to purchase fertilizer,” says Weyer.
According to Weyer, it’s initiatives like this that have allowed Starwood Hotels & Resorts to set a target to reduce energy consumption by 30% and water consumption by 20% across all of its hotels by 2020.
Another hotel currently applying a successful waste management system in the region is the Ramada Hotel & Suites Ajman, which has recently launched its new ‘Zero Landfill’ initiative, whereby it is aiming to recycle or reuse more than 90% of its entire waste in order to never have to send its waste to a landfill again.
Ramada Hotel & Suites Ajman general manager Iftikhar Hamdani explains that “when we first looked at our waste management systems, we quickly realised that the hotel was producing close to an average of one tonne of waste a day. We had between five or six skips scattered around the hotel, and we were also paying close to AED 150,000 ($41,000) to a waste management company just to take our waste away every year.”
The hotel’s conservation efforts saw the northern emirate property partner with the AIMS Group environmental solutions provider and Green Mountain Waste Management to launch an initiative in 2012 to reduce the hundreds of kilos of waste the hotel produced each day, most of which came from food and organic matter.
“The amount of land needed to dispose of the heaps and heaps of waste produced by hotels every day is one of the major ecological concerns for our region.
“Before we began the ‘Zero Landfill’ initiative, our waste was 60% from the kitchen, and we felt that we could really tackle that figure by using a special composter. We therefore made the decision to purchase the composting unit, even though the cost was high, which was initially a challenge to convince our group management of the potential benefits,” adds Hamdani.
Eventually, however, the cost benefits for the Ramada Ajman from using the composting system, which reduced the hotel’s daily waste from 800 to 1000kg, began to speak for itself and the hotel’s waste management system was recently commended by Dubai Municipality during a recent visit.
“We are very pleased with the commendation given by the Dubai Municipality for our Zero Landfill project, which shows that the public has started to recognise our environmentally friendly programmes that benefit both our property and our country.”
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ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION
Another regional hotel group aiming to promote the benefits of waste management for hotels beyond simple cost saving measures is the UAE-based Rotana Hotels, which has recently introduced a new green corporate strategy, monitored independently by a third party, which will be rolled out across all of its properties.
This green strategy has already seen the introduction of colour coded waste bins for the separation of disposable and recyclable waste on every floor across its hotels, with every restaurant and guest area also using segregated trash containers.
“However, keep in mind that recycling is also a lifestyle, and is not always something you can dictate,” warns Rotana area vice president for Dubai and Northern Emirates Thomas Tapken.
“While modern waste management initiatives will continue to grow in the region, its success in each individual property will depend on how much the general manager is involved and how it is presented to their colleagues.
Another issue is that our hotels have guests from many different parts of the world, many of which where recycling is not so common. So first we have to create a lifestyle, create a vision and then set certain goals, which is currently where the process is now,” he admits.
“We have to keep in mind that only 10 years ago, there was no garbage separation possible, because if you separated it and the same truck picked it up and put it in the same garbage dump.
In contrast today, every Rotana property has an EHS (Environment Health and Safety) manager, as well as holding monthly meetings about all the waste management actions and initiatives to be taken in the hotel,” reveals Tapken.
This is a sentiment echoed again by Mil-Tek’s Darren Laird, who believes that by “simply reducing the volume of its waste, a hotel will benefit in many ways”.
He says: “If you decrease your waste volume, then less rubbish has to be put into skips and take up space, which in turn means fewer trips or collections have to be arranged to take that waste to the landfill.
“Additionally, as well as reducing basic costs for the hotel, reducing waste also has countless, easy to judge benefits for your hotel and environment.
By minimising the amount of plastic, glass and cardboard you are throwing away, your hotel is taking up less room in the landfill, while less traffic and trucks have to be on the road coming to collect it, which reduces car pollution, and the number of noisy trucks coming and going through the loading area of your hotel,” he concludes.
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CASE STUDY 1
The Hotel:
Ramada Ajman, UAE
The leader:
Iftikhar Hamdani, general manager
Objective:
Ramada Hotel & Suites Ajman aimed to reduce its waste by 90% using a new ‘Zero Landfill’ initiative, whereby it aimed to recycle or reuse almost all of its waste by using a ‘reduce, reuse and recycle’ philosophy.
Strategy:
The initiative, organised in collaboration with AIMS Group and Green Mountain Waste Management, was launched last year as part of the hotel’s environmental conservation efforts. During a waste composition analysis at the hotel, it was observed that a major portion of the property’s waste was organic and food related and could be effectively used as compost. With paper, plastic and metals also being recycled, only a remaining minimal portion of hotel waste is then rejected and goes to the landfill.
Results:
The hotel's efforts were commended by the Dubai Municipality during a recent visit to the property, during which the team demonstrated how the compost machine reduces between 800 to 1000kg of the hotel’s daily waste.
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CASE STUDY 2
The Hotel:
Hilton Abu Dhabi
The leader:
Evangelos Karakoulias, environment, health, safety and hygiene manager
Objective:
Hilton Worldwide set itself the goal of reducing overall waste across the group by 20% in five years, as well as a 20% cut in CO2 emissions and 10% in water usage, with all of Hilton Worldwide’s hotels, across 91 countries, having signed up to the programme since 2012.
Strategy:
As part of the strategy, Hilton launched the worldwide LightStay programme, a global platform to help the group respond to the challenges of managing natural resource constraints, as well as empowering property owners and operators with tools that improve economic and sustainability performance at all levels.
Results:
After three years, until the end of 2011, it had managed to cut CO2 by 10.9% and water use by 7.5%, both on track to hit targets, which will potentially save the company more than AED 540 million ($147 million). Also as a result of the programme, the company has retained its ISO 14001 certification for Environmental Management Systems.
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CASE STUDY 3
The Hotel:
Westin Abu Dhabi Golf Resort and Spa
The Leader:
Sebastien Weyer, director of engineering
Objective:
The Westin Abu Dhabi Golf Resort and Spa is piloting a machine that turns food waste into a nutritious fertiliser in a one-time cycle of 10 hours. The Korean-developed machine supplied to the Westin Abu Dhabi by Union Paper Mills, has been in operation since March 20, 2013. It reduces the food waste from the hotel to a dry, high grade fertiliser.
Strategy:
Starwood Hotels & Resorts goal was to reduce energy consumption by 30% and water consumption by 20% by 2020. Staff are trained to separate all food waste from general waste resulting in the collection of approximately 225kg of food waste from the six restaurants and staff cafeteria across the hotel per day.
Results:
The carbon foot print associated with the transportation of the waste has reduced, the fees associated with the waste management company that used to remove the waste have gone down, and the hotel has reduced its food waste down to one-third its original weight. The Westin Abu Dhabi is now reducing the current outgoing waste by 1.1m³ per day.