LightStay also includes a social media platform that allows properties from around the world to “neighbor” each other, share best practices and compare performance. Through the system, engineers provide information on return on investment and overall cost of each project. This allows the company to sometimes find solutions to sustainability challenges in a “bottom-up” rather than “top-down” fashion, the company says. The system currently has over 3,400 “neighbors” and tracks more than 8,000 improvement projects.
In EMEA, the company’s Environmental Awareness Initiative, a method of engaging employees in sustainability changes in hotels and at home, has helped prevent 28,600 tons of emissions and avoided utility costs of US $16 million, of which more than half was attributed to changes in employee behavior, the company says. Hilton says it is examining how to expand best practices from this program to other regions in the coming years.
Waste
In 2011, Hilton was two years early in meeting its target of cutting waste output by 20 percent, with a 23.3 percent drop since 2008. Last year the company further reduced its waste output to 24.9 percent below 2008 levels.
Waste per occupied room fell from 6.2 pounds in 2011 to 5.9 pounds in 2012, while waste per square foot stayed steady at 1.9 pounds. On an absolute basis, waste output fell from 248,000 in 2011 to 242,800 in 2012.
The company says one major area of waste concern has been mattresses, which take up a lot of landfill space, and cannot be reused or donated. Hilton has therefore developed a partnership with DH Hospitality and Serta, under which DH installs and removes mattresses and box springs at all US Hilton properties, then recycles 85 percent of the materials into such products as tools, car parts, flooring and carpet padding. To date, Hilton have recycled over 9,200 mattresses from 14 hotels (it did not give a timeframe for this achievement) and another 50 hotels have been contacted or provided proposals to participate in the coming year.
The company has also found that about 30 percent of the newspapers it makes available to guests are thrown out each day. It is trying to address the problem by offering North American guests free access to USA Today digital content.
Meanwhile, Hilton’s waste reduction pilot program has collected more than 17,000 pounds of food for food banks worldwide, in its first six months. And since 2011, more than 700 Hilton properties have collected 270,000 pounds of soap, creating nearly one million new bars for people in need, including refugees, orphans and disaster victims.
