Environmental Accommodation Providers of Auckland (EAPA)

Effective management

The hotel
The Park Towers Hotel has 79 rooms and is located in the heart of Auckland City. The hotel offers conference rooms, a restaurant, bar and laundry.
Full time employees number 20.

This case study shows that commitment by Park Towers Hotel management has ensured that environmental management can be successfully integrated within smaller hotels.

Key environmental steps

• Motivation
• Planning action
• Making it happen
• Reviewing progress.

Motivation
The assistant manager of the Park Towers Hotel is responsible for co-ordinating and implementing the environmental programmes. She also plays the part of "champion" with a key role in educating and motivating staff about their environmental initiatives.

In the early days of the programme, she did everything from selecting the recycling contractors who were best able to meet their needs to flattening cardboard prior to collecting for recycling.

Planning action

• Commit to the environmental policy
• Identify all environmental initiatives to implement
• Identify immediate options
• To identify areas where they could implement environmental initiatives the management team agreed to
• Meet regularly
• Gather information
• Share information
• Prepare an environmental plan.

Together they watched Green Hotelier videos, collected and read articles and case studies and organised speakers to inform them of their options.

Environmental plan
Following the identification of options the Assistant manager prepared an Environmental Plan for 1996 which sets out specific actions Park Towers Hotel will take in terms of each of the EHOA Policy environmental goals. The Park Towers Hotel recognises that they are in the early stages of their environment programme.

Therefore they are concentrating in their first year on succeeding with simple low-cost initiatives, such as recycling. Park Towers Hotel management believes that achieving a big success in the early stages of their environmental programme is the best way to get staff committed to the programme.

Implementation of the tasks identified in the Environmental Plan
Management Meetings
Progress on existing and new environmental projects is discussed at weekly management meetings. These meetings have representation from all departments and ensure that all staff within the hotel are fully informed on environmental matters. For the time being, departmental heads have the responsibility for implementing and monitoring environmental projects undertaken within their departments.

Park Towers Hotel management has made it clear that they see their environmental programme as one which will be continually improved.

Staff involvement
They are relying on staff to come up with the new ideas for improving their programme.

Keeping staff informed
The hotel management is keen to keep staff fully informed and motivated about their programmes. The Assistant Manager meets and talks with all staff about their environmental initiatives.

Notice board

• The staff notice board has a permanent corner dedicated to promoting environmental issues.
• Staff are kept informed on progress against the annual waste minimisation and recycling targets with regular updates on the staff notice board.
• Articles and videos, which feature environmental initiatives undertaken by hotels, are made available to staff on a regular basis.

Keeping staff motivated

• Inter-department competition is running currently with a prize for the department that collects the greatest quantity of recyclables.
• A competition is also running for the department that reuses the greatest quantity of waste
• The management has found that these simple initiatives have already had a big impact on staff awareness, enthusiasm and participation.

Reduction in collections
Waste minimisation has been so successful that the weekly waste collection frequency has been reduced from three times to twice weekly.

Savings
The hotel has saved over $250 a month in waste disposal costs.

Who deals with my waste?

TIANZ

Green Globe 21