One Aldwych, London: combining sustainability with luxury

Green tourism is about a number of things. The very basic one is actually managing your business better. Bottom line, really important, just to be more aware of what you do and doing it better. It's obviously about resource efficiency and saving money. It's about waste management. It's about natural and cultural conservation. Biodiversity, encompasses all of those issues. But it also includes things like social responsibility and equality about looking after your staff, about your people, and people you work with. It's about supporting the local community and the local economy. And probably most importantly it's about making your guests happy. It's about providing an enhanced quality experience by making sure that people go away from you feeling happy, not feeling guilty having been on holiday with you, but actually really enjoy themselves and want to come back. And more importantly, it's also about future-proofing your business, and that's really important in today's market to know that you're going to be here in the future and that you are currently sustainable yourself.

So, what I want to do now is just give you a flavor of the kind of types of businesses that joined, what they've done, what they've achieved, what they've got out of it. And I'm starting with One Aldwych because it is a five star London hotel, and it's not perhaps typically what you would expect, a Green tourism business to be. We actually have nearly two hundred businesses in London, most of which are actually the large hotels, and in take the One Aldwych have done a lot. They've got a very committed Green team, and they've actually identified someone as Green Champion, and that really helps with getting the message throughout the whole organization. They've done a lot on waste, so they are actually separating the waste and get their food waste collected which is a big issue. There's legislation now being introduced in the UK to encourage businesses to have their food waste collected or try to reduce it through portion control and things like that. The hotels that are also in the energy and water side of things, so they've got LED lights throughout most of the area. And they've got a very clever system for their toilets, similar to the kind of things you might see on an airplane, it makes a 'woosh' sound as it's flushed but actually it's only using one to one and a half liters for every flush which is a fantastic. An average toilet use is about six liters. But they've also moved into things like purchasing more environmentally friendly products, so they have paraben-free guest soaps and they make a big thing about telling people about that with biodegradable packaging. An interesting especially because they are a luxury hotel and they have a spa with a fantastic pool, but it's actually chlorine-free which actually is great for the environment, but it's also great for the guests because you won't have a horrible smell, and it's much better for your skin. And they're also doing an awful lot within the local area to support theaters and arts projects. So, even though they are a significant, high-quality hotel, they've actually been able to achieve a goal in Green tourism and become a real ambassador for sustainability within London.