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In Focus
Mercure hotels in Australia launch carbon-neutral conferencing
EH Staff - Mumbai
Mercure hotels across Australia have gone green on conferencing, with the hotel
group being among the first to offer a national Carbon Neutral Conferencing
product. The new product was unveiled recently at the Asia Pacific Incentive
Meetings Expo (AIME) in Melbourne.
Under the Mercure Meetings initiative, Mercure hotels will fully fund offsets
for carbon emissions produced during the conference. This means the offset cost
of making a conference carbon neutral is covered by the hotel, not the conference
group. This cost covers the greenhouse gases produced during the meeting and
the offset is used to fund green-efficient energy sources at no extra cost to
the conference group.
Mercure has teamed with the Carbon Reduction Institute to
streamline the carbon offsetting process. The Institute's Carbon Calculator
determines the amount of carbon emissions created by a conference, and calculates
the amount of credits to be purchased from emission reduction projects or carbon
trading schemes, such as the replacement of inefficient lighting and technologies
with more efficient products, and replacing the use of electricity with natural
gas in both domestic and business environments.
Each credit represents a reduction of emissions equivalent to one tonne of CO2
and is registered through the New South Wales Greenhouse abatement scheme. In
addition, 10 per cent of all revenue collected from the purchase of these credits
is donated to CleanUp Australia in support of their clean up our climate program.
| The Shangri-La Mactan Resort and Spa, Cebu was recently
awarded the ASEAN Green Hotel Standard. The award was given in recognition
of the resort's compliance with environmentally friendly and energy conservation
measures.
The ASEAN Green Hotel Standard is one of the six
ASEAN tourism standards that the 10 ASEAN member countries of Brunei Darussalam,
Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore,
Thailand, and Vietnam consider essential for helping the Association of
South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) to be a Quality Single Destination. One
measure in the road map for integration of the tourism sector to realise
the ASEAN economic community is the establishment of the ASEAN tourism
standards. The ASEAN tourism standards task force is currently chaired
by Thailand, through its ministry of tourism and sports, and vice-chaired
by Indonesia.
The Green Hotel Recognition Committee selected
several hotels from each country based on the following criteria and requirements:
Environmental policy and actions for hotel operation, use of green products,
collaboration with the community and local organisations, human resource
development, solid waste management, energy efficiency, water efficiency,
air quality management (indoor and outdoor), noise pollution control,
waste water treatment and management, and toxic and chemical substance
disposal management.
The following undertakings are among the Shangri-La
Mactan Resort and Spa, Cebu's notable endeavours to be one of the leading
environmentally friendly deluxe property in the country:
- The Shangri-La Marine Sanctuary spans five hectares from the beachfront,
and teems with over 50 species of fish and coral.
- Hotel management and staff participate in regular coastal clean ups,
dive clean ups, and coral recovery programs.
- Shangri-La's Mactan Resort and Spa, Cebu is one of the first resorts
in the Philippines to comply with ISO 14001, the international environmental
standard, in all operations, encompassing environmentally friendly and
cost efficient practices that include installing energy-saving light
bulbs, biodegradable cleaning materials, water restrictors, and sewage
treatment facilities to prevent water pollution.
- The resort is also one of the first resorts in the Philippines to
be awarded a certificate of approval by Lloyd's Register Quality Assurance
(LQRA).
- A water desalination plant processes the resort's drinking water.
Seawater undergoes chlorination to kill bacteria, after which it goes
into the neutralisation tank to balance water hardness. The US$ 1.4
million facility is capable of producing an average of 900 cubic metres
of water daily, while the resort's consumption is 800 cubic metres.
- A sewage treatment plant manages waste by means of processing waste
to water, and simultaneously providing water to irrigate the resort's
extensive landscaped gardens.
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The eco-factor is not new to the Mercure brand however. All hotels in their
portfolio across Australia follow Accor's global environmental charter with
20 priority actions identified to reduce energy and water consumption and improve
waste management and recycling.
Accor's senior vice president Australia, Simon McGrath, said that the initiative
was designed to offer a complete meetings solution for conference organisers,
while recognising the industry's obligation to provide a greater level of environmental
responsibility. "The major point is that our hotels will carry the cost
of the carbon emission offsets, not conference groups themselves," said
McGrath.
"As an industry we need to be more environmentally conscious and the Mercure
meetings carbon neutral promise builds on a very extensive environmental sustainability
programme implemented across the Accor group. In Australia, for instance, we
are actively involved with Landcare, our Sydney Olympic Park hotels were the
first to receive ISO14001 accreditation, we have our own Earth Guest Day programme,
and Novotel is part of the Green Globe initiative. In other words, this is not
a token measure but part of a group-wide strategy to lead the way in environmental
responsibility."
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