Mövenpick Hotel and Apartments Bur Dubai goes green

An internal campaign group meet each month to brainstorm and discuss ongoing projects and incentives. During these sessions the group create action plans which can be as small as one individual making a slight change to their daily routine or a whole group of volunteers arranging to meet at the weekend to take action on an environmental issue.

Our chief of Engineering, Mr Awan Nazir sees sustainability as an everyday challenge - and in all his work in the property he aims to make our energy consumption smaller and more effective. With this in mind an audit was carried out in July with a focus on carbon reduction: the aim was to decrease our carbon footprint in an affordable way without affecting the comfort of our guests. One of the first changes implemented was to the main entrance, which is now fitted with an automatic revolving door - we have found that it means that less air-conditioning is required as it acts as a natural fan.

Across the hotel, you can feel attitudes have changed and waste will no longer be accepted. Employees are now taking ownership of this change - lights, air conditioning and computers all are turned off when not in use, recycling bins have been placed in every office, hangers are being re-used and all rubbish is being segregated into different types for recycling. All these changes are quite basic and small, but when carried out on a major scale day after day in such a large establishment they add up to a substantial difference.

Each year Mövenpick Hotel and Apartments Bur Dubai teams up with EEG to work on a 'clean up Dubai' initiative. Last December our hotel volunteers met in force in an allocated area of Dubai to carry their cleaning tasks. Our good-spirited volunteers are heading out again next month, and aim to focus upon tree-planting and beautification in green areas.

Sustainability in the kitchen is of the utmost importance to our chefs - they have re-evaluated where their ingredients are coming from and what changes they can make to minimise their environmental impact. The chefs have adapted their dishes to use local produce, which is better both for the local community and in terms of the carbon emissions used in transporting things like fish from the other side of the world.

One project taken on by our executive chef Marcus Gregs is to grow his own herbs on the rooftop - this is still in the trial stage as making this work for a busy hotel kitchen is a challenge.

Nicolas Pezout Executive Assistant Manager observes that "training and education are at the core of making environmental sustainability work, and we have found that by getting expert advice, involving the whole team and having fun at the same time, we can really make a difference."