Greentech Lead America: Hilton Worldwide, a global
hospitality company, has saved more than $147 million as part of LightStay, the
company’s proprietary sustainability measurement system.
Hilton Worldwide has also achieved its five-year goal to
reduce total waste output by 20 percent, a full two years ahead of schedule.
The company is on track to reduce energy consumption and CO2 emissions by
20 percent, and water consumption by 10 percent.
Since the introduction of LightStay, the company has
reduced its carbon output by 10.9 percent; waste output by 23.3 percent; energy
use by 9.7 percent; and water use by 7.5 percent.
Christopher J. Nassetta, president and chief executive
officer, Hilton Worldwide, said, “LightStay provides us with a
global platform to respond to the challenges of managing natural resource
constraints, and Hilton Worldwide is dedicated to empowering our property
owners and operators with tools that improve economic and sustainability
performance at all levels of our company.”
Every brand and hotel globally is required by brand
standards to measure and make continual improvements to their overall
sustainability results as part of LightStay, and, to support these efforts, the
system includes a ‘social network’ dashboard that allows properties from around
the world to ‘neighbor’ one another and share information, dialogue on a topic
or compare respective performance.
As a result of the 2011 LightStay results, Hilton
Worldwide maintains its ISO 14001 certification for Environmental Management
Systems, which continues to be one of the largest ever volume certifications of
commercial buildings.
Hilton Worldwide has been recognized by organizations
such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Chamber of
Commerce’s Business Civic Leadership Center and more for various other
sustainability initiatives including partnering with Global Soap
Project to recycle more than 17,000 pounds of soap; Implementing Good
360 to allow the company’s 3,900 hotels to donate goods to more than 2,000
organizations in need globally; launching the Center for Sustainable
Procurement to help global business procurement managers integrate
sustainability into their purchasing decisions; creating the Hilton
LightStay Sustainability Award in partnership with the Sundance Institute
to provide a platform for filmmakers to tell stories to catalyze change and
elevate dialogue around critical global issues; and purchasing over 450 million
kilowatt hours of green power over the last few years.