Shangri-La Hotel in Sydney tackles the plastic waste challenge by introducing wooden key cards and Just Water into its club lounge and rooms for two game-changing sustainable initiatives.
Shangri-La leads the way
The global mission to purge plastic waste just gained a little more momentum as Shangri-La Hotel in Sydney announces it will be the first hotel in the city to introduce wooden key cards and Just Water into club lounge and rooms.
The wooden key cards will replace 52,000 plastic key cards that are thrown away each year; and the introduction of Just Water into hotels rooms will reduce the use of plastic bottles by 360,000 per year. The wooden key cards are sourced from well-managed, plentiful, legally harvested and sustainable hardwood forests, with a grown-to-removal ratio of 2.4 to 1.
“Shangri-La is an early adapter of emerging environmental initiatives that use more renewable resources and less paper, plastic and fossil fuels,” says Philippe Kronberg, Shangri-La Hotel Sydney’s General Manager.
Ramping up recycling
Made from wood and bamboo, the key cards incorporate an RFID chip, laser-engraved logo and instructions, and are lightweight and durable.
Just Water’s carton is 100 per cent recyclable, made with 82 per cent renewable packaging and plant-based plastic in the shoulder and cap made mostly from sugarcane, and 54 per cent paper from responsibly harvested trees that contribute to 74 per cent less harmful emissions, compared to standard plastic bottles.
The cartons are filled with 100 per cent spring water with naturally occurring mineral and pH content from Cottonwood Springs, located at the base of Mount Warrenheip, Victoria.
A famous founder
Founded by actor Will Smith’s son Jaden, Just Water is an eco-friendly answer for bottled water, which is not only sourced in Victoria, but is packaged in a fully recyclable Tetra Pak carton.
Smith says he found the inspiration for Just Water when he was surfing as a young child and saw plastic bottles polluting the ocean.
“I’ve always felt really connected to the ocean so when I learnt about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in school, then saw first-hand that there were plastic bottles floating around in the ocean – I knew we could come up with a better option,” Smith said in an interview.
But wait, there’s more
Shangri-La Hotel Sydney has also introduced ORCA clean food waste recycling technology, which has diverted 39.73 tonnes of hotel food waste from landfill in the last six months, and avoided 34.96 tonnes of greenhouse gas, and 25.82 kg of methane gas.
The hotel has initiated paperless check-in and check-out, and DocuSign to replace internal paperwork.
