Green hotels

The Environmental Protection Bureau (DSPA) recognized 23 hotels in Macau at the 2015 Macau Green Hotel Awards, including four budget hotels presented with the new 2015 ‘Green Budget Hotel Award’ during the presentation ceremony held yesterday.
The five Gold prize winners included Sands Macao, Crown Towers, Hard Rock Hotel Macau, Grand Hyatt Macau and Hotel Okura Macau.
Paul Kwok, general manager of Grand Hyatt Macau told reporters that since July last year the hotel has switched to using LED lights in 90 per cent of the property, which is expected to generate savings of about MOP 1 million (US$125,117) each year.
The Silver awards went to Galaxy Macau, Hotel Guia, Riviera Hotel, Hotel Royal, Mandarin Oriental Macau, Grand Emperor Hotel and Grand Lisboa Hotel.
The one Bronze prize winner was New World Hotel Macau.
In addition, four hotels are awarded the ‘Green Budget Hotel Award’, including East Asia Hotel, Ole London Hotel, Sun Sun Hotel and Ole Tai Sam Un Hotel.
Finance Manager of Sun Sun Hotel, Tong Siu Kee revealed that the hotel had difficulties achieving energy efficiencies in the beginning, and the environment group in the hotel has been promoting environmental awareness to its employees and visitors. The hotel reduced its energy consumption by about 20 per cent in 2015 compared to the previous year.
Another new award for this year was the ‘Proactive Promoting Green Award’, presented to seven hotels.
The awards were launched in 2007 with an aim to promote awareness of environmental management in Macau’s hotel industry.
A total of 38 hotels have participated and received awards in all the editions of the Macau Green Hotel Award since 2007, comprising 35 per cent of all Macau hotels, and totalling over 19,000 rooms, or 60 per cent of all hotel rooms in the city.
Decrease in consumption
According to official data from DSPA, from 2011 to 2015, all the participating hotels have successfully reduced their consumption of electricity and water, and leftovers from restaurants.
On average, each participating hotel room has saved over 19,000 kilowatt hours, or 18 tonnes of carbon emissions – about 800 trees would have been needed to absorb such an amount of carbon dioxide emissions each year.
In terms of water usage, each participating hotel room has reduced its consumption by about 240 cubic meters, equivalent to about 240,000 one-liter bottles of water.
Regarding waste management, a 15 per cent reduction in waste produced has been achieved by each participating hotel room per year. Each awarded hotel collected over 5,000 tonnes of recyclable materials in 2015.
In 2014, 16 participating hotels collected and processed about 402 tonnes of leftovers from their restaurants.
The up-coming 2016 Macau Green Hotel Award will add another new award, the ‘Foundation Certificate’ with the objective of attracting more budget hotels to join, such as 2-star hotels and and 2 to 3-star apartments, according to director of the Environmental Protection Bureau (DSPA), Raymond Tam Wai Man.
The application period for this year’s awards will be from July 1 until August 16.