Environmental impact assessment: the walk for Taiwan's hotels

Finding the right balance between pampering and sustainability is quite difficult

• By Steven Crook / contributor Reporter

More than most companies are hotels in front of a difficult balancing act when they try to operate sustainably.

When people check into a hotel – especially in a luxurious property – expect you to enjoy a certain level of pampering. For many, staying in an upscale hotel is a break from the budget -conscious reality. Like Shaun Bettinson, solution director of the RCI Sustainability Group in Taichung, says: “You don't want to use the same towel for two days.”

A typical hotel is a resource -intensive structure, regardless of whether people stay in it or not, he says. And because their ability to offer comfort or surround them, some accommodation providers are “afraid of the word” sustainability “,” he says.

It is no secret that hotels are detailed consumers of electricity and water compared to ordinary households. One reason, says Bettinson, is that large hotels are 24-hour operations, so that various amenities and capacities are in the standby company around the clock. Another is that the hotel occupancy rates are constantly changing, while the number of people who use an office building – and the times when they arrive and leave – is far more stable and predictable.

Bettinson has been working with the 538-room regent Taipei since 2023, the first Taiwanese hotel that has joined the international Earthcheck certification process for tourism companies and goals.

Evaluation system

Earthcheck in Brisbane, EarthCheck based in Australia, offers a benchmarking system so that hotels can see how you are doing compared to peers and how you can reduce your environmental impact, ”says the Englishman.

Since state subsidies are available and the costs are low in advance, the program is “a practical step for hotels that want to take sensible sustainability measures without receiving a great financial burden,” says Bettinson.

He adds that when trying to convince the managers to register with Earthcheck, he emphasizes that the process overlaps up to 70 percent that you have to do anyway if the company has to publish an annual report of environmental and governance (ESG).

Like Green Building Certification systems such as Leed in the USA and Taiwans Eewh, energy saving is a key element of the EarthCheck process. However, because it is tailored to the tourism industry, Earthcheck focuses more on “guest area” than on the floor area. (A room that is occupied by two people overnight counts as two guest houses.) For hotels where events are open to outsiders and operates restaurants that attract a large number of non-guests, the calculation of the CO2 footprint and energy efficiency can be very complicated.

In contrast to Leed or EEWH, Earthcheck is an annual program. The participating companies pay an annual fee, but reduced operating costs as soon as inefficiencies are identified and addressed, part of these expenses can compensate for.

In Taiwan, says Bettinson, the biggest challenge that faces hots is hoping to get the EarthCheck certification, the time to locate and enter precise data.

“You have everything. You just have to collect it and bring it into the system,” he says, recognizing that the local hospitality industry suffers from a significant lack of work.

As soon as the process is underway, it is important that the sustainability goals of the property and the methods used to achieve them are communicated and implemented with the person who changes the leaves. [This effort] I can not only exist among the directors on the top level, ”says Bettinson.

The war against plastic

According to one estimate, the 14,000 hotels, motels and B&BS Taiwan had recently been responsible for 460 million pieces of disposable plastic, which entered the Wastetestream every year.

The local efforts to make the hotel industry a little more environmentally friendly began almost two decades ago with the (now now the Ministry of the Environment) environmentally friendly wind and business group competition of the Environmental Protection Administration. It was only until January 1 of this year that it became illegal for accommodation providers to supply free objects such as combs, toothbrushes or toothpaste or liquid toilet items in single containers that are less than 180 ml. Guests who need such products must now pay for them.

A similar law came into force in South Korea in March last year, but only applies to accommodations with 50 or more rooms.

In 2023 California banned the provision of small plastic bottles with personal care products in hotels and holiday rentals. Similar rules will appear in New York and Illinois this year. In the state of Washington, the prohibition is to come into force in 2027.

Taiwan's Single-Feuse Policy is one of the more advanced in Asia, Says Monique Chen (陳盈潔), Co-Founder and Chairwoman of Sustainable Travel Taiwan (STT, 台灣永續旅行協會), to Ngo Established in 2011. As recently as Three Years Ago, She Says, Local Hotels Were arguing that it'd be impossible for them to reduce their use of single-use toiletries and plastic drinking water Bottles.

Chen says that she does not know enough about EarthCheck to assess whether it is a useful instrument or could be misused by companies and that sustainability names should cover four “columns”: environment and climate; Community and labor rights; Culture; And management.

Since the goal of STT is to help companies achieve real sustainability, “we take over the tools or certification systems that can work well and can really change,” says Chen, who was the first person in Taiwan to qualify as a trainer at the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GStC).

In cases where the management of the hotel in what it can be, because the building itself belongs to another company, brainstorming and creativity can go a long way.

Menu design can help reduce the food emissions of hotels. By keeping beef and farmers from the main page and for highlighting vegan options, guests can be encountered towards environmentally friendly food decisions.

Green certification

Chen gives another example. In a award -winning hotel she visited, The Slogan “1+1

The StT (sustainableravel.org.tw) website contains a map of companies and goals that have received environmentally friendly certifications.

These include high-end hotels such as Mandarin Oriental, Taipei and small properties such as The Easy Space, a 5-room guest family in the Gongliao district in New Taipei (貢寮). The Footprint Inn in Jiji Township (集集 集集 集集 集集 集集 集集 集集 集集 集集 集集) is also listed, which was the first hotel in Taiwan on his website that has reached the Control Union/GStC International Sustainable Hotel certification and the first in the country to reach the highest possible evaluation of Level-Three.

Certain institutions have made considerable progress, but some tourism specialists perceive a widespread and worrying lack of urgency among the local hoteliers. Liberty Times (the Chinese -speaking sister newspaper of Taipei Times) reported on March 1 of this year of the thousands of hotels and homestays in the country, only 154 environmental certificates.

The newspaper cited a local scholar as a warning that a lack of certified green hotels, especially in Taipei, could hold back mice (meetings, incentive trips, conferences and exhibitions). If the country is supposed to attract international conferences and events, it cannot ignore the ESG trend, he said.

Just as large brands now have to ensure that their supply chain of environmental or human rights violations is not indebted, the organizers of events, from the conference to the hotel, in which the participants remain, correspond to the standards of sustainability. For the accommodation of companies that do not yet have to prioritize sustainability, the short -term threat from lost bookings can have more effectively than distant environmental problems.

Steven Crook, the author or co-author of four books over Taiwan, has been following since his arrival in the country in 1991. He drives a hybrid and wears his own chopsticks. The views expressed here are his own.