Recycling is the in-word at the Sheraton Grand hotel where waste is kept to a minimum.
The five-star hotel has built up a mini recycling industry with glass, cardboard, soap and cooking oils all being recycled to minimise the use of landfill sites.
The drive to cut down waste has meant that the 261-bedroom hotel now sends two skips a week to landfill compared to the previous three.
Barry Hayton, manager of security services at the Sheraton whose duties cover health and safety and the environment as well as security, said the hotel recycles around three tonnes of cardboard every month along with six skiploads of glass every week.
''We have the largest banqueting facility in Edinburgh,'' he explained ''so you can imagine the number of wine bottles we go through.''
The Sheraton has applied for a Scottish Tourist Board Green Tourism Business Scheme award. Scottish Office Minister Brian Wilson was due to launch the scheme covering hotels last month at Scotland's Travel Fair, but pressure of work forced him to call off.
It is hoped that the scheme will now be able to be launched at a meeting of area tourist board executives in a fortnight's time.
A similar award scheme was launched for self-catering establishments last year, and now that it has been extended to hotels the STB is keen that it becomes a standard within the industry.
More than 100 hotels have already applied to be graded, and the STB is hopeful that 200 hotels will be covered by the end of the year.
Hayton is aiming for a gold grading which means that the Sheraton has to pass the grade in 56 out of 93 standard measurements.
''We have tried to recycle everything possible. Our used soap goes to a charity which passes it on to needy people, clothes left behind by guests, and not claimed, are also given to a charity, and our used cooking oil goes to a firm of candlemakers.''
In addition, the hotel returns all wire coathangers to laundries and plastic containers in which vegetables and other produce are delivered are also returned to suppliers to cut down waste.
To save energy low-energy long-life bulbs are also used in all the hotel's rooms.
Richard Proctor, manager of the Shetland Environmental Agency which is responsible for monitoring the gradings under the scheme, said: ''There is no doubt that an environmental approach is good business.
''A 60-bedroom hotel recently made annual savings of #30,000 by monitoring their energy usage which represented a saving of 30%.''
This figure is in line with statistics issued by the Government's Energy Efficiency Office which estimates that the hotel industry's #300m a year energy bills could be cut by as much as 35% if steps were taken to reduce waste.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article