Mount Lavinia Hotel has announced that it is paving its path to be the first hotel in Colombo to achieve the prestigious Green Globe Certified status.
The world’s renowned distinction recognises hotels that are committed to operating at the highest environmental standards. Anura Dewapura, General Manager said ‘we are not only looking at the environment but also the food we present to our guests in the hotel hence bringing together pleasure and responsibility and indeed making them inseparable’.
Mount Lavinia Hotel chose to demonstrate their commitment to the environment by undertaking five aspects that will be assessed towards Certification in the future. The hotel will be assessed according to performance criteria that will guarantee, among other things, better waste management, less air pollution, noise control, energy and water consumption control.
After an initial benchmarking phase in 2010, the Mount Lavinia Hotel will be audited in order to obtain Green Globe certification, and will undergo the same process annually in order to guarantee that the criteria are maintained. The successful completion of the Certification process will demonstrate strong commitment to the principles of environmental sustainability and in conjunction with endorsing that eco-gastronomy is the best way to move forward in the culinary world.
Employees at all levels were involved in the process, at the start of the project which focused on sustainable development, the hotel’s commitment, and indeed that it should begin at domestic levels and the criteria that needs to be met in order to make it a better place to be in. The project began with an awareness session for the whole hotel that lasted for two weeks with full day sessions conducted by Hemantha Ratnayake the spear head of the Green Globe certification at a leading hotel in the Cultural Triangle.
Five committees were appointed to focus on the five aspects of conservation that Mount Lavinia Hotel has taken into account. The team leaders of these committees were then given an opportunity to propose an improvement plan for their unit and the mechanisms they will undertake to produce a positive and indeed cost saving measurements for the hotel.
Mount Lavinia Hotel further has taken the going green by establishing a movement known as Slow Food that totally endorses that eco gastronomy is also a link between plate and planet, and the way forward. Slow Food is a non-profit, eco-gastronomic member-supported organization that was founded in 1989 to counteract fast food and fast life, the vanishing of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat where it originates from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world.
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