Green Hospitality: How to Measure What’s Going In The Bin

4 min readMar 1, 2022

Waste is one of the biggest environmental challenges of our time. Did you know that waste production in Ireland is facing a waste crisis? Mountains of waste are building up across the country and without the correct green education and knowledge, the waste crisis will not improve. Fear not! Fifty Shades Greener has a 10 step plan on how you can measure what’s going on in your bins to not only reduce your waste but save you money on your utility bills.

1. CHECK YOUR BINS

Checking your bins isn’t the most glamourous of jobs but it’s the best way to start to understand your waste. By checking your bins it allows you to understand what waste is produced at your business so you can either take action to reduce or abolish some items completely.

2. INVOLVE YOUR TEAM

Knowledge is power, so make sure your team recognises what they can do and how they can help. ‘

3. UNDERSTAND WHAT WASTE IS PRODUCED AT YOUR BUSINESS

When you begin to understand and take note of the waste that is being produced from different departments such as Housekeeping, Kitchen, Leisure Centre or Bar it will empower your team to feel in control of the output of waste.

4. CHECK YOUR BINS AT DIFFERENT TIMES OF THE DAY

By checking your bins at different times, days, weeks or months will be a great indicator in understanding the varying factors of when waste is produced. For example, you might notice at the end of every week, there is a huge amount of food waste or that every day you have single-use plastic toiletries that go in the bin.

5. NOTIFY THE ITEMS YOU ARE DISPOSING OF MOST

Bring together all your departments and ask them to watch their departmental bins for a week and note the top 1 or 2 most disposed of items.

6. USE DATA TO EMPOWER YOUR DECISION MAKING

Data is crucial when implementing environmental changes. At the end of every week or during team meetings, you can revise your results of the top disposed of items. We recommend asking yourself these two questions to guide your decision-making; Are those items absolutely necessary to run your business? Either to make money or to enhance your customer experience?

7. YOU PAY FOR WASTE

Always remember that along your green journey, all the waste that goes into your bins and that ends up in the bin, you paid for it to get it to your business, and now you are also paying for it to get it taken away.

8. GREEN CHANGE IS NOT EASY

Green change is not easy, we understand. However, if you have one of the most disposed items that really does enhance your visitor experience the decision to abolish it can be hard. Consider this, how much does it enhance your visitor experience? Is it worth it when you calculate how much it’s costing you to purchase the item and then get it taken away by your Waste Company on a weekly basis? Can you offer an alternative perhaps?

9. REVISE YOUR RESULTS

So if you are concerned that your customers will not like the changes you implemented, provide a choice and allow them to make the decision on whether they want to create extra waste or not. On a consistent basis, revise your results to continually improve your green efforts!

10. GREEN BUSINESS = GREEN CUSTOMERS

As inspiration, we want to share a green story to inspire you on your green journey.

“After watching our Landfill bin for a week, we clearly established that our top disposed item were slippers from the hotel bedrooms. They were offered complimentary in all of our guest rooms and this had been hotel policy for years. But after doing the maths, we decided to take a different approach. We took away the slippers from all bedrooms, but we added a note from our General Manager to say the reason we had taken them away is because we were trying to apply Green Practices and our first task was to reduce our landfill waste, however, if any guest wanted slippers, they could call reception and they would be brought up to their room. A month later, 2 customers had requested slippers to be sent to their room, and 12 other guests had commented how good our Green initiative was.”

Result!!