Since the winter workshop and the disclosure of the results of the pilot project at the InterContinental Marseille – Hotel Dieu, the Business Club has continued to work on its pilot project “Towards a zero plastic single-use hotel”.
As announced on 15 December 2022, the Business Club has published its turnkey method “Towards a zero single use plastic hotel”. This method, which can be available free of charge on the BeMed website, is designed to enable hotel establishments that so wish to embark on a process to reduce single-use plastics (SUP). It includes the methodology and tools developed as part of the pilot project, as well as quick wins1 and advice from the pilot hotel. Each tool is drawn from the field experience carried out at the InterContinental Marseille – Hotel Dieu.
In order to disseminate this method and multiply the positive impact of the project, a series of webinars for hotel professionals was organised by BeMed, with the presence of the InterContinental Marseille – Hotel Dieu and ConsultantSeas, key partners in this pilot project.
This method can be adapted to contexts different from that of the pilot hotel in Marseille, France. This is why the Club is currently supporting La Badira, member of the Leading Hotels of the World standard, based in Hammamet, Tunisia.
While the Tunisian context is different from the French one, the starting point is also not the same, since the hotel has already carried out numerous actions to eliminate or replace SUPs in customer service. The focus is largely on the remaining SUPs in the back office, particularly in the kitchen.
The prioritisation phase was carried out and 5 SUPs were selected: food preservation trays, coffee capsules, food preservation films, pasta packaging and bags for on-site storage of traditional products. The benchmark of alternatives, accompanied by a simplified environmental analysis, will be an important step in finding solutions to reduce the quantity of SUP consumed by the hotel, while meeting the challenge of complying with hygiene standards.
All this work is being carried out with the support of a team of expert researchers in the human and social sciences, who have already had the opportunity to meet La Badira’s staff on several occasions to involve them in the project and facilitate acceptance of the change. In particular, they were the first to give their opinion on prioritising the SUPs to be targeted!
All the activities implemented in this pilot project will feed into an update of the turnkey method, which will also be freely available on the BeMed website. The pilot project is still ongoing. See you in a few months’ time for the results and the update of the turnkey method!
1 Quick wins are measures that can be put in place quickly to reduce the consumption of single-use plastics, and therefore the establishment’s plastic footprint.
