Hotel green pledge’s got to Bee boon
A Perth hotel has agreed to slash the amount of singleuse plastic items in its housekeeping department by buying big-size refills from a local family-run shop.
The New County Hotel’s general manager Karen Kennedy has decided to support her staff in ditching the hundreds of singleuse mini shampoo and conditioner bottles, washing up liquid and hand soap bottles consumed at the city centre hotel.
Having built up a relationship with The Bee’s Flower Shop, located just a few doors away from County Place on Hospital Street, Karen decided to start replacing small plastic bottles with the bulk refills offered by the eco-business.
“We’ve been using the Bee Shop for our flowers on reception for some time. We were consistently impressed with the flowers supplied by Craig and Tanya, and it made sense to explore the other products their fledgling company stocked,” explained
Karen.
“Five weeks ago we decided to go down the path of refills for practically everything.
“It’s hard to know if guests notice what we’ve done, but the use of the items has gone up, they are clearly popular.”
Now as well as topping up bottles in the hotel room bathrooms, staff refill hand wash bottles fixed to the walls in the restaurant, cafe and function room’s bathroom facilities.
They plan to add refillable body wash bottles and they already bulk buy washing up liquid for the kitchen and laundry liquid to prevent more plastic wastage.
The drive to weed out unnecessary plastic containers was pushed by the hotel’s shift manager Fiona Docherty.
Karen added: “Fiona was really keen and I credit her with getting us to make the changes.”
Karen’s not only in charge at the New County Hotel in Perth but also is the group GM for a city hotel in Sheffield and another in the Isle of Wight.
The good experience of making sustainable choices and changes in housekeeping here in Perth is something she’s now considering repeating at the other venues.
Craig Burnett at The Bee’s Flower Shop is keen to help lead the reduction of singleuse plastic cleaning products in Perth businesses.
He said: “If any other hotels would like to follow, please feel free to get in touch as we can order in weekly and customers can collect from our shop on Hospital Street.”
Craig runs Perth Community Farm on reclaimed land off Jeanfield Road.
The aim in creating the non-profit social venture for the people of Perth is to bring like minded citizens and school children together through growing vegetables, getting outside and cutting waste, so they have something in common and share multiple benefits.
You can find out more at www.perthcommunityfarm. co.uk