The story of our green journey

An ongoing process
Launching greener initiatives for a spa hotel, especially in older, historic buildings, requires a huge amount of research and planning. And every day, our Sustainability Manager is in close contact with all hotel departments to find new ways and areas we can optimize.

“We have many plans for our green journey, but while it’s important for us to constantly evolve, we are aware that Rome wasn’t built in a day. Kurhotel Skodsborg is a luxurious spa hotel, and our guests are naturally our first priority. They are the reason we can exist and it is important to us that the changes we make contribute positively to the guest experience, as well as our green journey.” – Sustainability Manager, Kurhotel Skodsborg

The transition is an ongoing process, and it’s important to us that the hard work we put in has a clear impact. All initiatives are therefore turned around both before and after adoption to make sure we’re going in the right direction.

Initiatives

• Improved wellbeing and fewer chemicals

Kurhotel Skodsborg’s strength is our skilled and dedicated employees who make everyday life at the hotel special. As a spa hotel, we naturally focus on mental and physical well-being, and we strive to improve the health and well-being of everyone who sets foot at Kurhotel Skodsborg, employees and guests alike. We prioritize employee involvement and to ensure everyone’s well-being, we send out a monthly employee survey that can be answered anonymously. Twice a year we also ask our employees for feedback on our green initiatives so we don’t miss out on great insights and ideas. Both those in development and those we have already implemented.

In September 2022, we took a new cleaning technology from PureTech into use, and we’re already seeing widespread positive impact. The technology, which consists of an eco-certified surface treatment of the rooms, means that we now only need three different cleaning agents on a regular basis, where we used to need eight. As a result, our staff are exposed to far fewer chemicals, and their skin, sense of smell and breathing have improved. Even our guests who are normally bothered by allergens such as perfume and dust notice a clear improvement in the treated rooms.

PureTech’s cleaning method prevents bacteria from settling on walls and furniture. This keeps a room clean for longer and makes it easier to clean – even with fewer chemicals. And while 90% of our cleaning products are certified with the EU Eco Label or the Nordic Swan Ecolabel, we see more benefits in the PureTech treatment.

Since partnering with PureTech, all our rooms have now been treated and cleaned with PureTech products. We are continuously working to expand the PureTech cleaning program throughout our establishment, with a focus on our meeting areas at the moment.

• Love of the local

Much of what makes Kurhotel Skodsborg special is our fantastic local area. Skodsborg’s location between forest and water creates a close connection and love of nature – which is reflected in the work of many local businesses. We have a special respect for those who actively contribute to both our and our guests’ green journey.

In our Spa Shop you will therefore not only find already recognized and much-loved products on the shelves, but also products from start-up local companies that are trying to establish themselves in a highly competitive market with great products and ideas.

• Food waste becomes gas

Food waste is a big issue in the hospitality industry – and we are of course no exception. We work hard to reduce food waste by carefully tracking the amount of food waste and adjusting our purchasing accordingly. Any food waste we have left that fits our own grinder is ground and extracted by BioTrans in liquid form, which then converts it into biogas for heating, electricity and fertilizer.

The food waste we cannot grind is collected in solid form by HCS, which ensures that it is also converted. For every ton of kitchen waste, approximately 120 m³ of biogas can be produced, and the waste that cannot be turned into gas becomes fertilizer. In 2022, we had approximately 4.5 tons of biowaste that HCS converted into biogas (around 480 m³) and fertilizer.

Many of the herbs and vegetables we use are grown in our own kitchen garden and more than 30% of the food we serve is organic. Our skilled chefs try to source locally and seasonally as much as possible and pay attention to animal welfare when buying products.

• Less plastic, more recycling

Plastic can be used for many things and can, in principle, be a sustainable solution. However, we are continuously trying to eliminate the use of single-use plastics. As mentioned, we do not offer our guests products packaged in disposable plastic and we return the boxes our food is delivered in to our suppliers. We sort any remaining plastic that we can’t recycle and send it for recycling.

We currently sort waste into 13 different categories such as cardboard, plastic, building materials, glass and electronics. Most recently added is a textile container.

We try to recycle what we can and invest in materials that are already recycled. A small but nice detail is that the uniforms worn by our skilled receptionists are made from recycled polyester and wool.

Kurhotel Skodsborg in the future
Working with eco-labeling has generated many ideas and goals for our green journey. It’s crucial for companies like ours to look inward and decide if what we’re doing is good enough and how we can improve.

The green transition is certainly a long, extensive process, but it has already changed everyday life at our beloved spa hotel. We have decided to implement our responsibility in a more focused way and actively contribute to improving the well-being culture – for ourselves, our guests and the climate.

We hope that our transparency can inspire others and illustrate that we are open to new ideas and initiatives that can help us on our green journey.

We also believe that collaboration can yield the best results, which is why we have decided to organize small projects to bring people together, such as clean-up days at Skodsborg. Twice a year – once in the spring and once on World Clean Up day (usually in September), we organize internal events where our employees together with their family members and friends can join forces to clean the area around Kurhotel Skodsborg, the beach area and Skodsborg Fitness Track. These events have taught us that more people on board can mean not only more fun, but also a cleaner environment.

Certificates

• Green Key 2022

Green Key is the international environmental certificate awarded to companies that go the extra mile for the environment. A company’s environmental performance is checked against 13 categories with 338 mandatory considerations for which points are awarded.

One item in the Environmental Management category concerns the extent to which the company has appointed environmental ambassadors who are responsible for environmental initiatives. In addition, we have hired a Sustainability Manager who works specifically and purposefully to optimize Kurhotel Skodsborg’s green journey. Similarly, in accordance with the requirements, we will conduct an annual review of the Green Key criteria and submit our environmental targets and action plan. In doing so, we always aim to evolve.

Food consumption and food waste is one of our focus points. For example, by offering more vegetarian and vegan alternatives, we hope that we can help minimize our meat consumption – especially red meat with a high carbon footprint. Our skilled chefs make smart and creative use of different vegetables to keep our guests’ dining experience unique. Running a spa hotel requires large amounts of both energy and water. As a Green Key hotel, we are obliged to submit an energy report every 5 years and work on suggestions to improve energy audits and energy labeling.

• Green Restaurant Bronze 2022

As the name indicates, Green Restaurant is Green Key’s eco-labeling scheme for restaurants that aim to be more advanced in their operations and strive for better environmental impact. The business is awarded points based on 12 criteria and is ranked as: Green Restaurant, Green Restaurant Bronze, Green Restaurant Silver or Green Restaurant Gold.

Kurhotel Skodsborg was ranked as Green Restaurant Bronze because we have met all the mandatory criteria and achieved more than 50% points in the point criteria. The mandatory criteria include setting and implementing a minimum of 2 environmental goals each year, training and informing colleagues on how to support sustainable efforts – and much, much more.

The criteria you can score points on range from the type of kitchen equipment, initiatives to involve staff and the energy source used in our operations.

Our goal is, of course, to improve and achieve as much as we can. For example, we will look at more energy-reducing technologies and initiatives and try to replace more of the products we use with more environmentally friendly alternatives.