Protecting the environment has been the core value of our company and our colleagues since 2008, before the birth of the CONNECT Programme. We now operate our hotels more energy efficiently and are more resource conscious as compared to 10 years ago because of the stronger environmental commitment among our leaders, colleagues, guests and business partners.
However, we experienced more frequent extreme weather events, which were the result of climate change as explained by many researchers. Our colleagues organised repeated clean up because the beaches, rivers, and ocean are covered by more plastic waste than ever. We, together with our guests and stakeholders, must take a step forward in order to keep the Earth inhabitable for our future generations.
We believe that sustainability must be integrated into our business activity along the value chain across all brands and properties. In the coming years, we will enhance our policies, standards and guidance throughout our entire business life cycle from site selection, design and build, procurement, operation and disposal in order to achieve these environmental goals.
“Walking the talk” is the core value to be embraced in our systems and our initiatives. Since 2012, we have stipulated our direction with the mandatory key performance indicator for all our hotels – to achieve EarthCheck certification.
EarthCheck is the leading international sustainability benchmarking and certification service for the travel and tourism industry. The EarthCheck standards align with international frameworks such as the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO), Global Reporting Initiatives (GRI) and industry practices such as the Global Sustainable Tourism Criteria (GSTC). Our hotels are therefore assessed and verified by independent third party auditors regularly to drive continuous improvement in sustainable operations. Some of these environmental goals will be embedded into EarthCheck certification system.
Sustainable Hotel Design Guidelines are part of our Design Control Document. The Guidelines define our minimum sustainable design requirements upon the project development and refurbishment of our hotels and resorts for the different brands. We will review and update the Guidelines regularly, and will also require our future hotel development projects to meet the International and/or Local Green Building Standards such as EarthCheck Building Planning and Design Standard and USGBC LEED Certification, adding to our portfolio of green design hotels.
Climate crisis is the biggest global challenge in the current century. If an average global temperature increase of more than 2 °C from pre-industrial levels, we will encounter catastrophic consequences for human beings and nature. Scientists have warned us that we have already reached 1°C and we do not have much time to reach the tipping point. All of our emissions must be reduced by at least 50% by 2030 and reach nearly net zero carbon emissions by 2050 to stay within the 2 °C trajectory.
For more than a decade, we have been focusing on operating our hotels with maximising energy efficiency to minimise our greenhouse gas emission. From time to time, our Engineers identify energy saving opportunities through optimising the operational efficiency of plant and equipment, and upgrading systems when there is a major refurbishment. On-site renewable energy sources such as solar panels have been installed in a number of our new built hotels and resorts in China.
In the next ten years or so, we must go beyond simply cutting our emissions. We are setting targets to minimise our direct and indirect carbon emissions, in line with the Paris Agreement to help our planet stay below the 1.5 °C global warming limit. We want to become Climate Net Zero hotel operators eventually, and we will first reduce our carbon emission per floor area by at least 50% by 2030. We may not have all the decarbonisation solutions yet, but we have identified the following three key priorities for action in the coming years.
1st Priority is to increase efficiency to reduce energy intensity by at least 50%;
2nd Priority is transition to electrified equipment in phases; and
3rd Priority is to switch to green power and on-site renewable energy.
We also believe in that our influence to our stakeholders, especially our guests and supply chain, can boost the climate action altogether. One of our community partnership focus is to inspire a million people to be conscious travellers. We will work with different partners to help spread the low-carbon travel messages and most importantly, turn these messages into action.
Water crisis are in the top global risks. According to the UN Environment study, demand for fresh water is likely to exceed supply by 40% in 2030, and half of the world’s population will be living in areas of severe water stress by this time. The impacts of climate change including extreme droughts and floods has increasingly threatened local water availability.
Our hotels are located in top travel destinations, which can be those most prone to water shortage, particularly where the tourist season overlaps with the driest months. Hotel operations heavily rely on water for hygiene, cooking and air-conditioning purposes. Therefore, water use per guest in hotels often exceeds that of the local population.
In the past decade, we have worked to reduce our water footprint by installing water-efficient equipment across our properties, and raising staff awareness on water conservation.
The development of modern luxury hotels and resorts includes larger swimming pools, spa, food and beverage area, and larger, indulgent bath and shower facilities in guest rooms. All these add up to boost the water use per guest night. On the other hand, over 90% of our hotels are and will be operating at high water stressed area in the next ten years based on our water risk analysis. Our hotels are likely prone to water shortage that will have significant impact on our service delivery.
We cannot simply follow the conventional approach of monitoring water consumption and efficiency. We must take bolder actions to make our hotels ready for the future. We are committed to reducing our water use per guest night by 50% in 2030. We have identified the following three key priorities to ensure we achieved our goal in the coming years.
1st Priority is overall water risk assessment on our current and upcoming properties;
2nd Priority is to increase operational efficiency to reduce our overall water intensity by at least 25%, with higher reduction goal in extremely high water stressed area;
3rd Priority is collaboration and transition to water circularity on-site or locally by phase 2.
We will carefully plan our internal water operational efficiency programme through retrofitting, major renovation and new built eco-friendly design to meet our enhanced efficiency requirement. We will also work with industry groups and experts to accelerate wider progress on water use and circularity.
Proper waste management has always been our prime concern since the beginning of our sustainability journey. Our waste stream is divided primarily into the following areas:
Recycling has always been our focus with the aim to ease waste management problems. This did not help much in protecting the environment, particularly to our marine system. We saw thousands and millions of pieces of plastic floating on our ocean, beaches, and rivers. We also understood that sending waste to other countries for recycling or other treatments is not the best solution. We must take a different approach.
We launched the ‘phase out’ plan of single use plastics among all our hotels in 2018. Instead of recycling, we must look into the “Reduce” and “Reuse” options first. This is the key principles when our hotels search for the eco-friendly alternatives to replace those single-use plastic items. By end of 2019, all our hotels have phased out eleven plastic items including straws, cocktail sticks, stirrers, takeaway containers/cutlery/bags, coffee cup lids, etc. We aim at phasing out all the remaining disposable plastic items including amenities and bottled water in guestrooms and also look into eliminating other applicable single-use disposable items by 2025.
Another waste component that we will focus on is food waste, which is also the heaviest portion of our regular waste stream. We are also keen on minimising our food waste being disposed of at landfill or incineration. From menu reengineering to surplus food donation, we are determined to minimise the food waste generation. For organic material which are not edible, we either apply food waste management technology or food waste collector to compost our food waste into environmental safe water, animal feed or soil conditioner. We will send zero food waste to landfill by 2022.
Our ambition is sending zero waste to landfill by 2030. This means we minimise our waste generation at all times including those from our daily operations, and the bulky and construction waste during renovation. We are therefore also committed to reduce our waste intensity and food waste generation by half in 2030. This will leave us minimal waste which will be recycled, composted, and lastly incinerated.
Sustainable sourcing is not new to us but this focus area has become a much more important component to enable us to be a sustainability leader in the industry. We have developed our Responsible Purchasing Policy and Guidelines since 2013. Additionally, EarthCheck certification requires our hotels to consider local sourcing and using green power and eco-labelled products, including paper products, cleaning chemicals, and pesticides.
We have started to work closely with our seafood suppliers for years to increase the procurement of seafood sourced sustainably. Like many other hotels and restaurants, we started our sustainable seafood journey by firstly, not serving endangered species like blue fin tuna and shark fin dishes. Our hotels also partnered with local green groups and suppliers to increase the use of sustainable seafood on the menu.
We will align the seafood sourcing practices among all our hotels and together, we are committed to use 75% of total seafood (fresh, frozen, can, dry) that are sustainably sourced with certificates by 2030. We do not claim 100% due to the complexity of seafood origin in the fresh and dry seafood markets in Asia, particularly for seafood items used in Chinese cuisine. We will actively continue to look for the right sustainable options and certifications in China, while boosting the holistic sustainable seafood offer in non-Chinese cuisine.
In addition to seafood, we are also committed to source most of our agricultural food produce sustainably and locally. Practicing what we preach, our hotels offer farm-to-table events, we grow our own herbs and even nurture rooftop beehives. We tested them out at selected locations and they worked. We now will expand these initiatives throughout our entire portfolio. We commit to using 100% caged-free eggs by 2025, and 100% sustainably sourced coffee, tea, cocoa, animal protein, sugar, and dairy by 2030. By 2030, 50% of the produce on our menu will be sourced from local farm/ fisheries/ home grown, supported by at least half of our properties growing their own food produce. Collaboration with the suppliers, local farmers/fishermen and NGOs to define “sustainably sourced” and product availability locally to enable us to work towards a more responsible food supply chain with a higher level of transparency and traceability.
We use many textiles in our operations, including our staff uniforms, bed linens and towels, down comforters, and leather sofa/fixtures. In the past, we tried to look for sustainable alternatives, which are not widely available, especially with luxury and locally/regionally options. In recent years, we observed an increasing number of the global fashion leaders promising to use sustainable textiles. We would do our part too. We are committed to use 100% sustainable cotton by 2025 and 100% overall textiles are organic, recycled or more sustainable by 2030. Ideally, we can contribute to the circularity of non-food materials regionally. This means we move from a linear model – buy, use, dispose – to a circular model where we can maximise our resources, use and reuse, so that nothing is wasted.
Paper is another material frequently used in hotel operations. All our marketing materials require FSC-certified paper as per our brand standard. Many of our hotels use FSC paper products such as toilet paper, paper napkins. We are committed to using 100% paper items that are FSC certified and concurrently, we move towards paperless.
In summary, we commit to sustainable sourcing by half in 2030. We seek to source materials that do not harm the environment and welfare of people and communities. We will take a progressive approach to sustainable sourcing with an updated policy, guidelines and capacity building internally. Innovation and collaboration with others are essential to our success.
