Thaindian News

New Delhi, Oct 24 (IANS) Green initiatives by hospitality major Hilton Worldwide’s 10 hotel brands saved $74 million in 2010, the company said Monday.

“To date, Hilton Worldwide’s efforts are equivalent to the removal of more than 50,000 cars from the road, water savings that could fill more than 1,000 swimming pools and energy conservation that could provide power to nearly 20,000 homes a year,” a company statement said.

The reductions included 6.6 percent of energy use, 7.8 percent of carbon output, 19 percent reduction of waste output and 3.8 percent reduction of water use.

“Sustainability is a priority for Hilton Worldwide and a central part of how the company does business,” said Hilton Worldwide president and chief executive officer Christopher J. Nassetta.

“LightStay has provided us with a platform to measure hotel performance and economic improvement, proving to be invaluable given today’s increased operational demands and resource constraints,” he added.

LightStay is a proprietary system developed to calculate and analyse sustainability performance. It measures multiple utility and operational metrics such as (but not limited to) energy, water, carbon, housekeeping, paper product usage, waste, chemical storage, air quality and transportation.

In addition, LightStay provides social networking tools that allow properties to communicate and share information, and features a “meeting impact calculator” element that calculates the sustainability impact of any meeting or conference held at a property.

“Hilton Worldwide properties are committed to making continual improvements to their overall sustainability results each year. All of the more than 3,750 properties are required to use LightStay by this December, bringing the company even closer to its long-term goals,” the statement said.

“To further support these efforts, new features were recently built into LightStay to allow hotels to track projects, share best practices and communicate with one another through a ’social network’ dashboard. Thus far, LightStay has more than 1,200 projects in the system, which is expected to double by next year conserving additional resources,” the statement addded.

Hilton Worldwide recently earned ISO 14001 certification for environmental management systems, achieving one of the largest ever volume certifications of commercial buildings.

“By 2014, Hilton Worldwide is committed to reduce energy consumption, CO2 emissions and waste output by 20 percent, as well as reduce water consumption by 10 percent from direct operations within the company’s owned hotels and corporate properties,” the statement said.