Environmental Management for Hotels Thispageintentionallyleftblank Environmental Management for Hotels A student’s handbook David Kirk fiEINEMANN Butterworth-Heinemann Linacre House, Jordan Hill, Oxford OX2 8DP 225 Wildwood Avenue, Wobum MA 0 180 1-2041 A division of Reed Educational and Professional Publishing Ltd -@A member of the Reed Elsevier plc group First published 1996 Transferred to digital printing 200 1 Q David Kirk 1996 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright holder except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London, England, W 1 P OLP. Applications for the copyright holder's written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the publisher British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Kirk, David Environmental management for hotels: Students handbook I. Title 647.940682 ISBN 0 7506 2380 2 www.bh.com Contents Preface vii Acknowledgements ix Introduction 1 What do we mea by the environment?- The driving force for change - Sustainabiky and the protection of scarce resources - Global environmental issues - Tourism, hospitality and the environment - References and further reading Environmental management 16 The environmental system - Environmental policy, strategy and implementation - Environmental impact assessment - Case studies - References and further reading Water management 32 Water and the environment - Water supplies - Improving water quality - Control of water consumption - Case studies - References and further reading Energy management 47 The principles of energy management - Energy supplies - The energy management programme - Case studies - References and further reading Management of the indoor environment 80 The significance of the indoor environment - Chemical hazards - Air quality - Noise - Light - Non-ionizing radiation - Case studies - References and further reading Materials and waste management 102 The need for materials and waste management - The waste audit - Product purchasing - Operations management - Environmental pollution - Recycling - Case studies - Summary - References and further reading Index 127 Thispageintentionallyleftblank I was present at the launch of the International Hotels Environment Initiative (IHEI) on 31 May 1993. I was very impressed with the guide produced by the IHEI and I immediately saw its potential to students and as a teaching aid to lecturers in a wide range of areas of the hospitality curriculum, such as accommodation management, facilities management and hospitality operations management. However, given the cost and format of the guide, I suggested to staff of Butterworth- Heinemann present at the launch that it might be worth considering a student edition, which would contain more in the way of background theory and explanation and less operational detail. They agreed to put the idea to the IHEI who also thought the idea worth pursuing. The text of this book is aimed primarily at students on postgraduate, undergraduate and HND courses in hotel, catering and hospitality management. It should also be suitable for students on vocational hospitality courses who are involved in project work on environmentalmanagement. Early in the process of writing the text, I took the decision to retain the focus on hotels rather than develop the book into the more general area of hospitality. Whilst it could be argued that it would be more useful if the book covered a broader range of operations which constitute the hospitality industry, I feel that it is better to retain a focus on a single type of operation, allowing a holistic approach which emphasises the interactions which take place. In my view, it should be relatively easy to then apply these principles to other areas of hospitality. In this book I have attempted to relate environmental management to the general management of hotels since, the concepts are most likely to be accepted if they are integrated into the overall framework of decision making and day-to-day management. Environmental management cannot succeed if it is seen as an ‘add-on’ to the management decision making process. I have retained the case studies which were developed in the guide as these allow students to see the links between the general principles developed in the text of the book and the way in which industry has chosen to develop these principles. The book starts with a general introduction to the concept of sustainability and develops the idea that we need to take action locally if we wish to change the global environment. This is followed by a discussion of some of the major threats to the environment and their causes. Specific environmental initiatives within the hospitality and tourism industry are then described. In Chapter 2, the underlying Principles of environmental management are developed through agreed policies, an audit of current practice and the targeting of areas which would benefit from change. In doing this, emphasis is placed on the need to develop environmental awareness throughout the company, all the way from board level down to all levels of staffing, and to identify individuals who will take responsibility for action. The two chapters which follow go on to look at two of the major areas of resource consumption in a hotel, water and energy. Some hotels have already done much to reduce consumption and associated costs in these areas and these projects are viii Prefnce illustrated through the case studies. Because of the high cost of energy and water to hotels, it has been possible to institute changes both at an operational level (through awareness and training) and through capital projects. Chapter 5 goes on to look at the management of the quality of environment within the building, with specific reference to air quality, noise and lighting. The final chapter looks at the management of materials and waste, taking a holistic view of materials management from purchasing to waste disposal, with a discussion of the relative merits of waste elimination, waste re-use, recycling, incineration and land- fill disposal. This is followed by a summary which considers the relationships between all of the undesirable outputs from the hotel and indicates how they should be viewed as a total management system rather than as separate problems. David Kirk Acknowledgements Thanks must go to the International Hotels Environment Initiative for their agreement to develop a student version of their excellent manual Environmental Management for Hotels: The Industry Guide to Best Practice and for allowing the use of text, diagrams and case studies from this manual. In addition to the use of work from this guide, Figures 4.13,4.14,4.15 and 4.16 are taken from Kitchen Plunningund Management by JohnFuller and David Kirk, published by Butterworth-Heinemann (1991). Thanks must go also to my wife Helen for her patience and her willingness to allow the lap-top computer to accompany us everywhere, including on holidays to the beautiful Lake District, which provided a sufficient inspiration to finish the book Thispageintentionallyleftblank I lntmduction What do we mean by Yhe environment’? While there are several different ways in which the word ‘environment’ is used, most people are aware that there is a need for all of us to take care of the environment, if we are not to threaten the ability of the earth to support future generations. Some aspects of the environment are very obvious from our day-to-day lives, such as increasing traffic levels, together with the associated air pollution and loss of greenbelt (protected areas of land surrounding towns and cities) and the countryside to road development and urbanization. We are aware of other dangers through the debate in the media, but these issues vary from tangible effects such as the shortage of physical resources (such as fossil fuels) to less evident and more long-term effects such as global warming and the hole in the ozone layer. The difficulty lies in translating these overall concerns, particularly those that are not directly related to us and which are less tangible, into action by the organization and by the individual. Our actions can sometimes seem inconsequential, compared to the size of global problems (Wright, 1992). Environment Flow of: materials money information Figure 1.1 A system and its environment From a systems viewpoint, the term ‘the environment’ refers to any aspects that lie outside the system under consideration and which are separated from the system by a boundary (see Figure 1.1). The boundary acts as a control on the flows that take place from the system into the environment and vice versa. In this context we can consider the boundary to be a semi-permeable membrane which acts as a regulator, allowing the free flow of some things but preventing the flow of others (see Figure 1.2). 2 Environmental Managementfor Hotels Semi- Permeable permeable Impermeable Boundary Figure 1.2 Control offrows across a boundary The boundary can be considered to be an artificial construct which allows us to define our area of interest. For example, we can think of our environment in terms of global, continental, national, regional, local and personal boundaries. In this way, systems form hierarchies. At one level, we can think of a person as a system, but then people working together in a hotel make up the human resource system. In a different context, these same people form the local and national social and political systems. Beyond this, individuals represent their national social and political groupings at international gatherings. We can view some of the environmental issues, particularly the relationship between our actions and the environmental impacts in terms of primary, secondary and tertiary effects, as shown in Figure 1.3.