How proficient is your hotel in environmental management?

Environmental Management System. The mere name can instantly make people disengage. It sounds difficult, overly complicated and rather costly – and its acronym in the sector, EMS, does not sound friendlier. But an EMS is nothing more than a way to ensure your good environmental practices are always implemented and well recognised.

Big hotel and restaurant chains have EMSs in place, but they also have resources, an army of staff and in most cases a sustainability manager or a whole team to take care of everything. You have none of the above and wonder if you really need an EMS as you have enough work following your guiding principle in business which helps you run your company efficiently.

This might sound surprising, but if you run your business efficiently, if you pay attention to water and energy consumption, you not only save on bills but also protect the environment. And you may already be much closer than you think to getting extra recognition for your efforts and reaping extra benefits with an EMS.

Check where you are on the six-point scale

1. Your starting point

How does your business impact the environment? As a hotel/restaurant manager, you should start by asking the right questions and finding the answers to the following questions:

• Do you know how much water and energy you use?
• Do you know how much waste you produce? And how much of it is recycled?
• Do you check if your providers care about the environment?
• How do you impact the biodiversity around you?

If this is not something you do yet, you have to think of a way to tackle the challenge. For instance, start with your water and energy consumption, pick up your bills and write down how much water, electricity, gas… you are using in a year. An Excel spreadsheet is sufficient – and if you can detail it per month, even better.

On this website, there are plenty of articles on each of the 4 points, and plenty of easy-to-implement ways to start reducing your bills and your environmental impact.

2. Does it really matter?

When you are aware of how your business influences the environment and your surroundings, it is time to ask the most important question. Would your clients, employees, family and business partners care to know you are making an effort in this field? If the reply is “no” you may stop the exercise here – but we are pretty sure that's not the case.

If you think that preserving nature can contribute to making your hotel more attractive and helping your guests, employees and yourself feel better, having a number of environmental objectives within the values underpinning your business could be useful to you. So, give it a try and put it on paper. Once this is done, you have your environmental policy - the cornerstone of any EMS.

3. What can you do better?

Write down a plan of what you are already doing towards the objectives you have set and what you would like to do next. Try to be precise. For example, it is not enough to say: use less water. You need a more detailed plan - use 5% less water yearly by installing low-flow heads in showers. Keep it realistic: assess the cost of the renovation as well as the money saved on water consumption so that you will know how quick your return on investment is. If you are short on ideas or looking for reliable data, have a look at this website. Many actions need no or little capital investment and can reap large benefits. Think about assigning a task to every employee so that everyone is responsible for a small improvement.

4. Have you succeeded?

After this stage generally comes the “check” phase which you can sum up in one word: audit. If you want to take it very seriously you can ask an external auditor to visit your hotel to check if the previous steps have been well implemented and what you could improve, but at the beginning you could also ask a colleague or a friend that has some common sense and environmental sensitivity. After all, it is an evaluation to determine if you managed to do everything you planned in point 3. It is also a very good occasion to get a bit of distance and consider your work and the work of your employees from a different angle.

5. Where should you make more effort?

Following the audit come the corrective actions, which are what you will change to solve any issue and keep improving. This step will finalise your management system because yes, if you have reached this far, you have an environmental management system!

6. Brag about it

Finally, to capture the benefit of your work, you may be tempted to communicate your achievements. To do this, you can find some inspiration in the Annex IV of the EMAS regulation addressing environmental reporting and in the EMAS Sectoral Reference Document for Tourism, which will reveal some relevant indicators and best practices that you could highlight in your report. However, do not hesitate to cook it “to your own taste”! Most of all, it should be meaningful for you, your employees and your guests.

If you achieve all the six points, congratulations! You have implemented all principles supporting a real EMS. What separates what you do from certifiable EMS, such as ISO 14001, perceived as serious and complex or from EMAS, the Rolls-Royce of Environmental Management? In reality, not that much; you are already pretty close. Just have a look on the EMAS website and you will see that you are almost there! Do you want to benefit from the EMAS logo to boost your reputation? Contact your Competent Body: they will be pleased to inform you of the next steps!