7 Ways to Stay More Sustainably
Conscious about your environmental footprint when you travel? Take a look at these ways to make your hotel stay more eco-friendly, so the only footprint you leave is a memorable one on the sparkling sands of an iconic Sydney beach.
As travellers, we’re all aware of the impact we make when we trot the globe, and are always looking to reduce our effect on the environment as we go about our journey. Gone are the days where we could simply click a button and offset the carbon emissions of our flights and feel like we’ve done enough. It goes much deeper than that. We want to choose travel experiences which help us minimise our push on the planet and support sustainable practices in the process.
So how can you travel and stay more sustainably?
Here are a few ways you can consciously reduce your impact when travelling and staying in a hotel, with our support.
#1. Replace paper with digital
Leave the paper at home and travel light – literally – by moving as much as you can to digital. Opt for digital booking confirmations, hotel information packs, receipts and invoices. Utilise online check-in facilities, like our contactless digital kiosks where you can check in (and out) with a few touches of a screen. You can also opt to go digital with your room key, which is easily downloaded onto your smartphone! (Although we also offer the option of a physical room key card too). Each room has a digital “do not disturb” panel on the wall which will notify housekeeping if you wish for privacy or you can indicate if you want your room cleaned. You can choose to peruse the bar and cafe menu online and even check out an illustrated map of the area via our website.
#2. Source locally
Going local with your purchases – whether it’s travel supplies, a keepcup of coffee or a take-home travel memento – means reducing your carbon footprint. In the ground floor lobby and Wayfarer’s Bar & Café, you can discover our signature botanical fragrance from candles handmade by Pyrmont local Em Cook, while enjoying croissants from Pyrmont’s PiOiK Bakery, Staves Beer brewed nextdoor in Glebe, wine from an all-Australian list, and custom bottled cocktails mixed in Sydney with local spirits. You can also find locally-made items in our retail store. Letting our local heroes sing not only means lower impact but also supports local business and creates a great sense of community.
#3. Say no to unnecessary packaging
When buying for your trip, avoid purchasing products which come in plastic or unnecessary packaging. And avoid packing your luggage with items into plastic bags, instead opt for silicone or canvas. Choose to bypass packaging on your travels wherever possible. And select a hotel which does away with unnecessary wrapping and encourages recycling and sustainable practices. If packaging is unavoidable, opt for biodegradable and recyclable, like our slippers wrapped with a paper band instead of plastic. Use sustainable bathroom items like our refillable Rituals bathroom products (more below). Our laundry bags found are also eco-friendly, made of cornstarch and LDPE which is a recyclable and biodegradable material. And all rooms are equipped with a recycling bin you can dispose of your rubbish thoughtfully. Need a canvas bag? We sell them in our retail store.
#4. Bring your own bottle
These days, it’s not unusual to see travellers with kitchen utensils and reusable water vessels in tow, even if they’re travelling to and staying in places kitted out with these items. Bringing your own means avoiding use of disposable cutlery and cups on the go (it’s easy to get caught out at the airport, on a tour, at a museum) and saying no to single use plastic. Some hotels, like ours, have banned the use of plastic water bottles. Instead, we encourage use of our refillable water bottles in each room’s mini fridge and access to chilled filtered water on-tap at our complimentary Moda still and sparkling water filling stations located on each floor of the hotel. You can also purchase a stainless steel water bottle in our retail store if you want one of your own to travel about with.
#5. Opt for eco-friendly skincare
Choose bathroom amenities, such as skincare or haircare products, which have a sustainable focus, using organic ingredients and recyclable materials. And going eco doesn’t mean comprimising on quality, as is proven by B-Corp certified Rituals which produces a beautiful collection of luxurious skincare and haircare products with sustainability at the forefront of development. We are the only hotel in Australia to feature fabulously fragrant Rituals in our bathrooms, with shower gel, shampoo and conditioner which comes in eco-friendly refillable dispensers.
#6. Stay in a repurposed space
Reusing and repurposing is a key way to reduce our environmental impact, and you can support this by choosing a hotel which occupies an existing building. Rather than bulldozing down and starting anew, hotels which have breathed new life into old buildings pave the way for creating spaces which reuse existing structures and mantain and celebrate the importance of history. Our hotel has been created within an existing property, originally built in the 1930s as a grain storage building. We have keep the original heritage features such as support columns, facade and exposed brick walls intact, and created a new hotel within this structure, and new elements have been constructed using recycled materials wherever possible and technologies such as double-glazed windows to reduce the need for cooling and heating the rooms.
#7. Turn it off and save energy
It’s a hot day. You’re in your hotel room with the aircon blasting, and you’re about to head out for a few hours to explore the area. You want to come back to a cool room. So you keep the aircon on. For hours. When you’re not even there. Ok, it’s tempting, but an easy way to be kinder to the environment is to conserve energy. If you’re not using it, switch it off. We take the thinking out of the equation on this one, because our rooms are equipped with sensors and a door energy management system which activates to turn off air-conditioning and lighting when rooms aren’t occupied, saving energy where possible.
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How do you minimise your environmental impact when you travel? What can we do to help? Let us know if you have suggestions on ways we could expand our sustainability processes and approach.