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.