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| A view of the audience at the QGBC event. |
Embracing the ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle,’ motto with determination, the Green Team at Wyndham Grand Regency Doha is saving energy, water, gas and washing chemicals and setting a model for the hospitality sector in the country.
“By replacing the halogen spotlights in 242 rooms with LED lights, we reduced energy consumption by about 75%,” Manish Dahal from the engineering department told the launch meeting of the Green Hotel Interest Group of Qatar Green Building Council on Monday.
If the halogen spotlights used to consume 72,600 watts per hour, the LED lights brought that down to 13,080 watts per hour, a savings of 59,520 watts per hour, which translates to a reduction of QR22,447 per year in the
energy bill.
Though the hotel installed 2,180 LED lights in place of the 1,452 halogen lamps replaced, the energy consumption was less. The investment of QR124,000 has a payback period of 5.5 years.
Given that LED lights have an average lifespan of 35,000 hours, compared to the 2,000 of halogen, they should last around eight years even if used for 12 hours daily.
“The advantages of LED lights also include very low heat emission and no damage from frequent turning on and off,” Dahal said while revealing that the hotel is contemplating some solar energy projects to further the green agenda.
The housekeeping department saved QR6,280 during August by inspiring hotel guests not to change their bed linen daily. The linen will be changed only if a guest keeps the linen conserve card on the bed.
During the month, guests opted not to change linen in 785 rooms or 61% of the total rooms.
The half used shampoo bottles and soap collected from the rooms are being used to clean the public areas of the hotel, including the floors and toilets.
“We also persuaded our suppliers to replace the cardboard cartons, hundreds of which are thrown out daily, with plastic baskets that are returned to them,” Ahmed Dass from the housekeeping department said.
He suggested establishing industrial green laundry units to cater to hotels and hospitals to bring forth a massive savings on water use.
“If the water consumption for a standard on-premise laundry system is 22 to 24 litres per kg of linen, it will be just six litres in an industrial laundry, and a mere 2.4 litres for a green laundry.”
Wyndham Grand Regency Doha’s food and beverage department is active in recycling paper and eventually aim to be paperless.
“Communication is through e-mails, shared folders and e-media and LPOs are e-mailed instead of printing hard copies,” assistant director Ashwin Shetty explained.
The conference services and restaurants reuse notepads, flipcharts, pencils and pens, live buffets enable cooking of adequate food with portion control, and banquet linen is washed only when necessary.
In the stewarding department, knee operated washbasins help reduce the quantity of water used. Plastic, paper and glass waste are separated and sent for recycling.
“There will invariably be some food waste irrespective of how hard we try, and this is now going to the municipal landfill due to hygiene and safety reasons, but we have plans to start composting organic waste,” Shetty said.
The green plans for future also include a green meeting room package. Water jugs instead of water in plastic bottles, air-conditioner temperature at 24C, iPads for rent instead of notepads, pens and pencils, and use of daylight for morning meetings are part of the agenda.
Earlier, assistant general manager Ghada Sadek introduced the Green Wyndham Team.
The hotel has signed an agreement with the Qatar Green Building Council to work together to “disseminate environmental knowledge as applied to the built environment, to promote awareness and student and other youth involvement in Qatar”.
As a part of the ‘Wyndham Worldwide’ ‘Count on Me’ programme which calls for the hotel group to be a leader in sustainability practices, the Doha hotel launched the “Wyndham Grand Green Programme” and started its implementation from February this year.