Anantara property in Dubai diverts 62 per cent of waste from landfills

Anantara The Palm Dubai Resort has reportedly diverted 62 per cent of its waste away from landfills.

The resort said that it is following five key principles with regards to its landfill diversion strategy: refuse, reduce, reuse, repurpose and recycle.

In 2021, it installed an onsite water bottling plant, which has reportedly saved over 1 million single use plastic bottles by replacing them with glass refillable bottles. Single use bathroom amenities are no longer available at the residences too. A new coffee supplier was sourced to ensure used coffee pods were recycled. Styrofoam packaging is no longer accepted at the resort too.

Anantara added that it is offering reusable Anantara branded flasks to gym guests, which removes the need for single use cups and plastic bottles, saving 600 single-use plastic bottles per month.

On the F&B front, it said that 9.7 tons of cooking oil is being cleaned and reused. Also, 245 tons of garden waste and 178 kgs of coffee cake has been used for compost, while 208 kgs of soap has been collected and reconditioned for cleaning at the back of house.

The resort has also in the last year installed a new Food Digester machine. It has processed 21.6 tons of food waste and turned it into grey water for use in fertilising and landscaping, allowing the resort to reduce its carbon footprint by 86 tons over one year.

Anantara The Palm Dubai noted that it has recycled 29.6 tons of glass, 1.8 tons of plastic and 453kgs of metal cans and 38 tons of paper recycled over the past year.

All of its sustainability efforts has reportedly led to an estimated saving of Dhs120,000 per month. Over the next ten years, its Food Digester and bottling plant is forecast to bring a return on investment of almost double their value.

It said that the measures that it implemented helped to increase the quantity of waste that it could divert from landfills from 6 per cent to 62 per cent, thereby bringing it in line with markets such as Singapore which has a 60-65 per cent waste diversion rate among its upscale and luxury hospitality establishments.

In another significant sustainability initiative in Dubai, the Delta Hotels by Marriott, Dubai Investment Park property collaborated with AirOWater in an initiative to transform humidity in the air into drinking water for hotel guests. The hotel currently has two AirOWater’s AWG units which produce a range of 500 to 1000 litres of water each day, enough to cover all the property’s drinking water requirements.

Earlier this year, Dubai’s Department of Economy and Tourism (DET) relaunched its Carbon Calculator tool that measures the carbon footprint within the emirate’s hospitality sector. It can now track real-time data for carbon emission sources, allowing hotels to identify and manage their energy consumption. Every month, hotels are mandated to submit their consumption along nine carbon emission sources: electricity, water, district cooling, liquefied petroleum gas, landfill waste, recycled waste, petrol, diesel and refrigerants. This information is collated and analysed to provide industry insights on the sector’s collective carbon footprint. In addition, by formulating a baseline, hotels can understand their comparative energy, water and waste consumption trends and identify cost-saving opportunities too.

This article originally appeared on Business Traveller Middle East