How to make a hotel green & responsible: Get on with it!

Hos­pit­al­ity industry pro­fes­sion­al John Mor­ris Wil­li­ams shares a little of his long exper­i­ence ini­ti­at­ing and driv­ing com­mon-sense meas­ures at hotels and in host com­munit­ies. Mr Wil­li­ams makes it clear that he favours real action over expens­ive cer­ti­fic­a­tion, believ­ing that dis­cern­ing sup­ply chain part­ners and guests are cap­able of per­ceiv­ing green-wash­ing and cyn­ic­al CSR.

UPDATE, June 2021: Promp­ted by “GT”, Mr Wil­li­ams offered the fol­low­ing update to his June 2017 “GT” Insight: 

I am no longer gen­er­al man­ager at the Luang Pra­bang View Hotel. That hot seat has been taken by Sen­gmnay Chaila, who has con­tin­ued the adven­ture with his team. Due to COVID and our second lock­down here in Laos, life has been hard for the prop­erty. Upkeep of the gar­dens is ongo­ing as plants don’t care about COVID. And moth­er nature needs to be taken care of daily.

I have seen great recyc­ling efforts here in Laos, as well as ini­ti­at­ives to clean up the rivers, includ­ing the Mekong. There are a lot of her­oes in Laos. And they are more vis­ible now due to less traffic. Their carts and trucks ply the roads, clean­ing up and recyc­ling what they can; mak­ing a liv­ing while keep­ing Laos clean. 

I would like to see a surge in garbage sep­ar­a­tion before Laos opens its doors, espe­cially at his­tor­ic loc­a­tions and tour­ist attrac­tions. This would make the state­ment to loc­als and vis­it­ors alike that Laos is ready, clean, and green.

With that noted, Mr Wil­li­ams is happy for his “GT” Insight to be giv­en a fresh round of pub­li­city. He hopes that it con­tin­ues to be of interest to readers.

Life’s a beach – clean it up!

My pas­sion for ini­ti­at­ing com­mon-sense “green” pro­jects in the hos­pit­al­ity industry began 1989/’90 in Krabi, Thai­l­and; at Dus­it Rayavadee, as it was called back then.

We had to ship all our garbage by long-tail boats to the main­land daily. So we sep­ar­ated it. Paper, card­board, old oil, tins, alu­mini­um, plastic bottles, wine bottles, and even broken glass­ware and china was either reused or sold. All the staff were involved in recyc­ling from day one and it worked won­ders for the hotel and the com­munity. The daily ship­ment was slashed as a res­ult. Weera Uabam­rung, our boat man­ager, came up with the idea of using fish­ing net bags instead of black bags for garbage ship­ments to the main­land. The com­bin­a­tion of these ini­ti­at­ives res­ul­ted in a huge reduc­tion in the amount of garbage dis­posed as well as the cost of doing so.

Oth­er hotels, such as Six Senses Koh Samui, Kand­aburi Resort Samui, Infin­ity Samui, Haad Tien Beach Resort Koh Tao, all joined in to col­lect and sep­ar­ate their garbage. We also encour­aged hotels to pro­duce their own effect­ive microor­gan­isms (EM) for use in rivers and drains when required.

We developed a small kit­chen garden for our herbs and spices. Food waste went to loc­al pig farms or was com­pos­ted for the garden.

We also organ­ised beach clean-ups twice a day dur­ing the stormy sea­sons; or all day depend­ing on the sever­ity of the storm – if we had a beach left to clean up! And we col­lec­ted washed-up sea­weed, which makes great com­post. We also set up a dive asso­ci­ation whose mem­bers would join us on beach clean ups. They cleaned the reef while we cleared the shoreline. Loc­al emer­gency ser­vices teams and a truck from the tessaban (muni­cip­al­ity) also pitched in. Tour­ists and loc­al res­id­ents reg­u­larly par­ti­cip­ated. Some days more than 300 people would turn out to clean the beaches.

While on Koh Samui I was the head of the “green team” for the Thai Hotel Association’s South­ern Chapter. We were able to work with the may­or to offer grants of THB 50,000 (~ USD 1,466) per school to cre­ate an aware­ness pro­gram, build recyc­ling sheds, and install rain gut­ters and water tanks. Some 26 schools on Koh Samui benefited. Stu­dents would even bring their garbage from home to be sold for funds to buy books and school accessor­ies. Our human resource man­agers were involved in facil­it­at­ing com­mu­nic­a­tions between teach­ers, hotels, and the loc­al gov­ern­ment. Col­lect­ively we man­aged to reuse or recycle about 50 tons per month of what would have oth­er­wise been sent to the dump on the main­land. This pro­gram was a huge suc­cess and is still run­ning today.

Koh Tao was a little dif­fer­ent. The hotel sep­ar­ated all its garbage and the loc­al staff sold or kept the reusable and recyc­lable items for them­selves. The beach at Haad Tien was cleaned around the clock on stormy days; yield­ing up to 300 bags per day of rub­bish, includ­ing plastics, waste from junkies (syr­inges), broken bottles, tires, and a lot of sea­weed (for compost).

Life’s a river – goodness flows downstream

When I star­ted man­aging the Luang Pra­bang View Hotel, in Laos, March 2014, I faced a great chal­lenge encour­aging people to embrace the recyc­ling concept and for staff to treat it as part of their job. Some staff already kept bottles for them­selves or to sell them, although this was not a team effort.

The hotel already had grey-water ponds when I arrived, and was reusing this water for the gar­dens. This was a great begin­ning. The ponds are deep. We have fish in them and use water hyacinth to keep them clean. We add our own effect­ive microor­gan­isms (EM) to the ponds and all hotel drain­age sys­tems when required.

We also use EM to remove grease from the tiles of guest rooms. It does a great job without harm­ing the staff or the water sys­tem with too many chemicals.

We make our own EM. It takes 45 days to get molasses and fruit peel­ings to mature into a brown, sweet-smelling, friendly liquid full of EM. We donate our sur­plus EM to Free the Bears and Laos Buf­falo Dairy for them to use to clean their pens out and reduce smell.

Water-sav­ing cards installed in all rooms work well. We have key cards for sav­ing elec­tri­city. And LED lights have been installed. With these changes effected across the entire hotel in 2017, this will bring our util­ity costs down by 15 – 20%. In addi­tion, our toi­lets have reduced water con­sump­tion and we have elec­tric vehicles for the hotel grounds.

We have installed a water sta­tion at the hotel for guests to refill their water bottles before they go out or when they return. For meet­ings we ask groups to use carafes rather than plastic bottles on the tables. Most com­ply.  Green net bags are now used in many areas of the hotel to keep our plastic bottles. Again this saves a lot of money down the line.

All the kit­chens now have a full sys­tem of recyc­ling and reusing. Yoghurt pots go to the garden­ing team for grow­ing seed­lings. Soda water bottles are used to keep honey from loc­al sources or for cold drip cof­fee. We keep plastic bags for recyc­ling and even sell them back to some suppliers.

There are six com­post heaps at Luang Pra­bang View Hotel. Since we star­ted com­post­ing in about 2014 we have not pur­chased any soil or fer­til­isers. Pre­vi­ously we were spend­ing USD 200 – 300 a month on that.

Egg car­tons are com­pos­ted after first using them to grow seed­lings. Cof­fee grounds go into com­post. We even col­lect grounds from Joma (a loc­al cafet­er­ia) once a week. Grass cut­tings and dry leaves are also col­lec­ted and added to the heaps; pushed along with some EM and water from time to time. Anoth­er hotel in town, the San­a­keo Boutique, reg­u­larly sends us their garden waste for our com­post heaps as they don’t have the space. All paper waste – news­pa­pers and A4 –  goes through the shred­der and is added to the com­post, except for the news­pa­pers loc­al people col­lect from time to time to make bags to sell at the markets.

With­in the grounds we main­tain four pigs and 100 ducks. Pigs help to con­sume food waste that’s not best suited to com­post until they are fat enough for the butcher at around four-to-six months old. This rev­en­ue goes back to the hotel. Four pig­lets are then bought and the cycle begins again. Sim­il­arly we sell or use three-to-four-month old duck­lings and spare enough of them to main­tain a breed­ing pop­u­la­tion of 100.

Through imple­ment­ing this sys­tem­at­ic approach to waste man­age­ment, gar­dens, and live­stock, we have been able to teach the hotel’s teams how to more effi­ciently and effect­ively man­age their own gar­dens and live­stock at their homes and villages.

The fruit and veg­gies we grow in our gar­dens – from bana­nas to beans, dragon fruit to marigold flowers – save us up to USD 400 per month. Banana trees that have cast their fruit are cut down and giv­en to Chang Pheauk, the white ele­phant of Luang Pra­bang. The hotel is the keep­er of Chang Pheauk. And her dung makes great compost!

Sur­plus garden pro­duce has a lot of uses. For example, sur­plus bana­nas are baked into banana bread for the hotel and for the two loc­al schools we help out on a reg­u­lar basis.

Not only do the stu­dents get a tasty treat occa­sion­ally, we also arrange to have their schools sprayed for mos­qui­toes twice per month in the wet sea­son, deliv­er books and par­cels of food, and go to clean their dorms if need be. We also teach stu­dents how to recycle and make money from it. The team enjoy going out and meet­ing the children.

Plants and trees that sprout new shoots are used through­out the interi­or of the hotel, again sav­ing us a sub­stan­tial amount of money. Aloe vera, goose­foot, white lilies, and oth­er plants that simply need care and water do the job for us. All rooms have goose­foot plants. They regen­er­ate fast, are easy to sep­ar­ate, and they help clean the air. In meet­ing rooms we use regen­er­at­ive palms and plants, which make the rooms look nice and green. They are all easy to look after and we change them every month or two depend­ing on how many days the air con­di­tion­ing has been run­ning and the room occupied.

While there is no beach to clean up in Luang Pra­bang, there is the town itself and the banks of Mekong and Nam Khan rivers on which it lies. We act­ively clean cer­tain areas of town in front of our hotel and we often join the town clean-ups on the last Sat­urday of each month. The loc­al gov­ern­ment who are in charge of garbage col­lec­tion are start­ing to help the com­munity with this. They have taken on the chal­lenge although we need to see more drive from them.

Here at Luang Pra­bang View Hotel we have developed a cycle of work and life that has giv­en our teams a lot to think about on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly basis. To pull all this togeth­er we have an edu­ca­tion­al pro­gram for our team. We also work with our com­mer­ic­al agents and update them on our ini­ti­at­ives. EXO, for example, is a good sup­port­er of what we do.

Common sense, hard work, conviction

It is very hard to put all this down into words; even more so into prac­tice. It takes team­work, effort, time, and perseverance.

We don’t fol­low any rules from green organ­isa­tions as they just cost money. This works against being green and clean as they charge a lot just to have their names asso­ci­ated with a place.

Gen­er­al man­agers and hoteliers should not go that way. Instead, do as much as you can for your hotel, push it out on social media, and email your agents. This is good enough. Don’t waste money on these people. Use the money at the hotel. Agents will know if you are telling the truth. They will inspect.

Your ini­ti­at­ives should come from the heart. As GMs we shouldn’t be look­ing over shoulders at what oth­ers are doing. Let oth­ers look over yours while you do what can be done at your hotel.

My thoughts are that this is a must-do. Some will dis­agree and say we are wast­ing time. And most who don’t par­ti­cip­ate don’t see any mon­et­ary value and they will nev­er join, and there are many of them.

Edu­cat­ing our staff and chil­dren is vitally import­ant; to give them a new dir­ec­tion; one that cares for their envir­on­ment, their coun­try and the plan­et as a whole. Edu­ca­tion pro­grams are not well set up in any Asi­an des­tin­a­tion I have worked in. And it’s so dis­ap­point­ing that there is no real drive or push.

Recyc­ling is a good prac­tice and it needs to be an integ­ral part of the com­munity. UK, Brazil, Europe, and many oth­er places sell garbage to the Chinese and they turn this into new goods to sell back. All power to the Chinese. They have seen a way to reuse waste and cre­ate some­thing from it; jobs and profit, and their industry is mov­ing for­wards. Mean­while many of our soci­et­ies still scrape the bot­tom of the bar­rel. Without recyclers, our garbage piles would be mountainous.

In Laos we see people who col­lect and recycle garbage day in and day out. They scrape out a liv­ing. But I believe they can make a much bet­ter liv­ing because “garbage is gold”. This is the slo­gan of Wangthong­pan­ith, the Thai garbage col­lect­ing com­pany. I agree with it.

As for the ini­ti­at­ives we have under­taken here at Luang Pra­bang View Hotel, there was only ever one way to get them done: Do them! Then share them with your team. And make them under­stand how vital it is to recycle and reuse and keep their areas clean.

It’s down to com­mon sense, hard work, and a per­son con­vinced that it is well worth doing!

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About the author

John Mor­ris Wil­li­ams’ hos­pit­al­ity industry career has taken him from his home town of Porth­madog in Wales to some of the most excit­ing des­tin­a­tions in the world: Scot­land, France, Bar­ba­dos, Saudi Ara­bia, Thai­l­and, and now Laos. Each has had its own chal­lenge and adven­ture, he says. Mr Wil­li­ams’ early career was as a chef until he arrived in Thai­l­and and “moved out of the heat of the kit­chen and into the fire of run­ning hotels, build­ing them, and reshap­ing them to be prof­it­able, or not”. His focus in Laos is “giv­ing back to the com­munit­ies I work with, help­ing those who need help in the industry, and build­ing team­work and com­munity spir­it with oth­er stake­hold­ers”. Mr Wil­li­ams is the co-founder of Lao travel portal WeAre­Lao.