Sustainable Hilton

by Alessandro Ferrua

Even grand hotels are becoming environmentally friendly, using small steps directed to the service for its customers and to internal staff, present in the offices of the various hotel of the chain. This shows the Hilton Hotel in Milan, during the European Week for Waste Reduction, held some little actions, very interesting.

«It’s since 2007 with the program “We Care” at European level that Hilton implements coordination for sustainable activities. This year the program is global and is called Lightstay» says Monica Cervio, Personal Assistant of Ilio Rodoni, General Director of the hotel.
«All actions have been communicated to the hotel staff during a meeting aimed at all employees in which we gave a preview. Like the day without paper “Paperless Day”, we have alerted our colleagues on November 23 requesting that in the offices they tried to avoid the use paper. 44 quilts were given to the Salesians of Don Bosco in Milan and beds and mattresses to the company “Dona Con Amore” ONLUS. For our customers, on the reception desk we placed a digital frame with information about the European Week for Waste Reduction and jam jars containing a parchment reused with 10 tips for reducing waste, both in Italian and English».

But there’s more, in fact Dr. Cervio adds that «there are other international activities that we have participated actively involving customers and staff: Earth Hour, where for 60 minutes we turned off the lights or down where necessary, Earth Day, which is a world day of the ground during which they were offered the seeds of flowers and Car Free Day (a day without a car). Hilton Milan, thanks to its continued contribution to the environment, two years ago won a bicycle for each of his employee» and in this case it was just a regional competition sponsored by the Hilton company.

To highlight the absence of classical individually packaged disposable products for its customers, «indeed, at the breakfast buffet we have introduced the use of dispensers for cereals, fruit juices and coffee, laundry service, our team use dispenser for detergents and not individual bottles. In addition, employees have introduced a dispenser for water» concludes Dr. Cervio.

The awareness of the company also continues outside the European Week for Waste Reduction, as well as costant and creative efforts continue to reduce the impacts of any human activity on the environment.