LONDON—Premier Inn, the United Kingdom’s largest budget hotel chain, is celebrating a hat-trick of breakthroughs in its efforts to reduce CO2 emissions from its business operations and provide its customers with more sustainable choices. In 2010 Whitbread, the owners of Premier Inn, committed to a target of reducing its carbon emissions by 26 percent by 2020 (relative to a 2009 baseline). Premier Inn is announcing three significant achievements in its drive to reduce CO2 emissions and raise standards of sustainability across its 46,000 bedrooms. These are:
1. Achieving an “excellent” sustainability rating for its Burgess Hill Premier Inn and Beefeater Grill from the Building Research Establishment (BRE). The hotel, which opened 12 months ago, is Premier Inn’s second green hotel and is showcasing technologies which are now being embedded across the wider Premier Inn portfolio.
2. Quantifying the CO2 footprint of the Premier Inn bed. Research has now benchmarked the total CO2 emissions associated with producing each of Premier Inn’s 46,000+ beds with a view to reducing emissions levels in future bed production.
3. Ranking as one of the U.K.’s top companies for acting on CO2 reduction by being re-certified for the Carbon Trust Standard. Whitbread is one of 80 U.K. companies to achieve this benchmark.
“We are looking at innovative ways of lessening our impact on the environment and using the scale of our business to effect positive change,” said Claire Hornsby, head of Corporate Responsibility for Premier Inn. “Cutting our CO2 emissions makes good business sense—it saves us money, makes us more competitive, and gives us a clear market differentiator against our rivals. Our achievements show how serious we are about the environment and we will continue to invest in driving up our sustainability performance in line with our carbon reduction targets.”
Measuring a Bed’s Impact
With the assistance of the Carbon Trust, Premier Inn has calculated the carbon footprint of one of its most important assets—the signature Premier Inn bed. With more than 46,000 Premier Inn beds across 606 hotels, the Premier Inn bed offers a real opportunity to save carbon.
Whitbread is now working with Hypnos, its bed manufacturer, to reduce the carbon emissions from each new bed. By working together in this way with suppliers Premier Inn can use their expertise in this field to improve performance across the supply chain.
“By working with our supplier we have analyzed the levels of carbon emissions produced from a Premier Inn bed,” said Nigel Graham, head of Property Procurement at Premier Inn. “We are now focused on driving these carbon emissions down to create a more sustainable bed for the future.”
Ground Source Heat Pump
One year on from its opening, Premier Inn Burgess Hill has been awarded a BREEAM “excellent” sustainability rating by the Building Research Establishment (BRE). The hotel features an array of sustainable features including a ground source heat pump, grey water recycling, energy efficient lighting, low flow showerheads and the use of high levels of insulation.
The lessons learned from building Premier Inn Burgess Hill are being incorporated into all new-build Premier Inn hotel developments across the country.
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