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Being green is part of Fairmont DNA
The Fairmont Empress in Victoria, BC recycles between eight and ten metric tonnes of compost each year.
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TORONTO—”Being green is really part of our DNA and it’s something that our colleagues across the world have really embraced.”
So says Sarah Dayboll, manager of environmental affairs for the 56-property Fairmont Hotels and Resorts. Fairmont has been in the environmental game since 1990, and its Green Partnership program often serves as a model for competing hotel companies and associations.
Here’s what some Canadian Fairmont hotels are doing.
The Fairmont Royal York was awarded $49,000 for water conservation efforts, under the City of Toronto’s ICI Water Saver Program, which rewards companies for demonstrated water savings. In 2005, the hotel installed a commercial water softener that reduced water use in the laundry to one wash and one rinse per cycle, saving 76,000 liters of water per day—enough water to supply 500 homes!
The Fairmont Waterfront in Vancouver installed a heat-recovery system that captures condensate, steam that has been condensed back into water, from domestic hot-water tanks. This is then used to preheat incoming city water. This process saves an estimated 305,380 kilowatt-hours per year, roughly the same amount of energy it would take to power seven average-sized homes.
The recycling programs are becoming increasingly comprehensive. To date, there are twenty Fairmont properties converting used kitchen oils into bio-diesel as inventive ways to reuse items.
The Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise, Alberta has purchased a bio-diesel refinery unit, which is used to convert unusable oil product from the kitchen into bio-diesel to fuel grounds equipment and the two new shuttle buses that have been purchased. A DVD inside the buses will inform the guests about the program.
The Fairmont Empress, Victoria BC, has compost facilities on site for any form of food waste. Year round, The Fairmont Empress recycles between eight and ten metric tonnes. In the course of a year, that keeps the equivalent of four 53-foot tractor-trailers out of the regional landfill. The Bengal Lounge, the hotel’s restaurant, has embraced composting. On an average Friday night shift, hotel colleagues have reduced their waste from four garbage cans to one—all the rest goes into the compost bins.
The Fairmont Winnipeg, in partnership with the hotel purchasing and food & beverage departments, has become 100 per cent Styrofoam free. Previously Styrofoam containers had been used for outside catering functions. Existing inventory was either donated or sold to the various groups and organizations.
The Fairmont Tremblant, Quebec, strongly believes in helping the community by distributing amenities and furniture to those in need. With this goal, they helped to build La Samaritine, a recycling and distribution centre for used household goods and continue to support the centre’s efforts with materials from the hotel.
“Fairmont is resolutely aware of the business impacts associated with environmental damage, and we believe global warming poses a significant threat to our planet,” says Dayboll.
That’s why they joined the World Wildlife Federation (WWF) global Climate Savers Program in January 2008 to develop a comprehensive climate change strategy for reducing operational emissions. Through the Climate Savers agreement, Fairmont has committed to reduce operational C02 emissions from its existing portfolio of hotels by 20 per cent below 2006 levels by 2013. This is the equivalent of removing 19,777 cars from the road each year.
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