Circular Hotels is a collaborative project set up by a number of relevant stakeholders in the Balearic Islands
The stakeholders are Tirme, Melia, Iberostar, Riu, Garden, AgroMallorca and Son March.
Mallorca is working towards sustainability and intends to become the first zero waste island in the world.
In Mallorca, tourism represents more than 60% of the GDP and Agriculture 1,3%, but in terms of land use, agriculture manages 85% of the land.
Currently, about 20% of food ends up in the garbage.
This practice goes through four steps:
1. Hotels raise the awareness of their customers and train their employees to separate waste efficiently, focusing especially on food.
2. Once the food is seperated, the councils’ collect the waste without mixing it and take it to TIRME,
3. At TIRME the organic waste is worked on and transformed into ecological compost and sent to Agromallorca and Son March.
4. Agromallorca and Son March get the compost to their farmers and these use it to grow vegetables that are then sold to the hotels that provided the waste for the compost. Therefore closing the circle of collaboration.
Key objectives are:
1.Join efforts concerning the principles of Circular Economy promoted by the EU.
2. Contribute to 10 of the 17 SDGs established by the UN: innovation, sustainable communities, production and responsible consumption, climate action and partnerships to achieve these goals.
3. Increase the offering of local (zero miles) products on the island.
4. Make society more sustainable5. Use R&D technological solutions to contribute to the fulfilment of the
Resources needed
The number of resources needed are really quite unlimited. This practice needs collaboration from the tourism industry on the islands and calls for collaboration from infinite people. Financially, this best practice is a private initiative that the companies are having to self-fund.
Evidence of success
The pilot is still ongoing but results expected are:
- PPPs: establishing solutions that contribute to the sustainability of an economic model based on tourism, that works with highly limited resources due to insularity.
- Find out what waste can be prevented.
- Generation of direct savings and reduction of food waste
- Part of the waste is turned into
compost and put back into the production chain.
Difficulties encountered
People being aware of the importance of separating waste properly and then doing so.
Potential for learning or transfer
- The project intends to make use of new technologies to identify and quantify the organic waste generated by hotels.
- How to prevent the generation of a great deal of organic waste that could be prevented.
- The need to carry out tasks that help to regenerate the natural environment.
- The need to support the agricultural sector in Mallorca.
- Climate change.
- The need to carry out activities that help to reduce the impact the tourism sector has on the environment and increase environmental awareness on companies in general.
Tags: Agriculture, Circular economy, Environment, Farming, Food, Islands, Low-carbon, Tourism
