Sustainability

As a member of the international luxury hotel group, we are conscious of our environment and strive for a sustainable and luxurious guest experience. We commit to minimise environmental impact and maximise social impact during the ultimate luxury guest journey.

We implement numerous initiatives and follow hotel management policies that minimise the consumption of natural resources. We were honoured to receive the EarthCheck Gold Certificate, awarded for complying with the requirements of sustainable hotel management as per the EarthCheck Certified Programme. This Certificate is issued after a rigorous audit by the EarthCheck Certified Programme - one of the most reputable sustainability certification programmes in the hospitality industry. We monitor and report on our water and energy consumption, carbon footprint and waste management, and continue to implement advanced technologies in these areas to minimise the impact of our operations.

Our team is dedicated to delivering the utmost journey experience to our guests by crafting memorable culinary experiences. We keep the environmental and social impact of our hotel in mind and collaborate with local suppliers that fit our sustainability requirements in supplying food. 

In line with the company’s goal of making our supply chain more sustainable, we eliminate single-use plastic from all our hotel amenities. The partnership with Clean The World, allows us to collect and recycle soap bars and bottled amenities discarded by our hotel guests. Furthermore, we only use environmentally friendly packaging for our delivery services.

These are a few of the sustainable steps we take to positively impact our nature and social environment. Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten Kempinski Munich continuously works on strengthening our commitments and taking further steps in our sustainability journey.

Please find out more about our measures and sustainability strategies below.

Our measures

As a luxury hotel, we are aware that some processes, such as the production of waste or increased energy use, cannot be avoided. Nevertheless, we do our best to keep our carbon footprint as low as possible and minimise our impact on the environment wherever we can. For more sustainable operations in hotel management, our ESG (Environmental, Social and Corporate Government) team has developed a sustainability policy to guide our strategies and goals. This enables us to ensure that every area in our hotel can make its contribution and that we are constantly improving.

Purchasing
When purchasing our products, we attach great importance to the sustainability of food and beverages and are therefore increasingly working with regional producers. In general, it is important to us that our regional and international suppliers pay attention to environmental protection and are labelled. This enables us to ensure sustainable processes along the supply chain. We have also taken the following measures regarding purchasing:

• Use of deposit boxes for food - the cardboard boxes are returned to suppliers
• Switching bathroom amenities to sustainable alternatives
• Glass bottles for complimentary water at guest departures instead of plastic bottles
• Own herb bed in the inner courtyard
• Use of regional butchery products 
• Seasonality & regionality of the menus/the raw materials sourced
• Various organic certifications

 

Administration
For us, sustainable processes also come into play in the back-of-house and administration. From resource-saving processes and environmentally friendly cleaning products to travel subsidies for public transport, we motivate our employees to adopt a sustainable lifestyle beyond the workplace. We attach particular importance to the following measures in the back-of-house and administration:

• Use of the "Sure" line: biodegradable cleaning agents; no harmful ingredients
• 80% purely plant-based cleaning agents
• Less paper through digitalisation (e.g. digital payslips)
• Travel subsidy for public transport
• Recycling (e.g. use of old folders, name badges are no longer printed)
• Saving other resources (e.g. using eco-paper, switching off lights and screens)
• Health promotion through the "zamma sportln" initiative
• Vegetarian meals once a week - "veggie day"
• Sustainable promotion of awareness (training, social commitment)
• Avoidance of staff water in disposable bottles: Reduction of transport routes; water dispenser with filtered tap water instead

 

Technology, electricity & water use
Concerning our use of resources, we endeavour to take energy and water-saving measures wherever possible. To this end, we document our total consumption of electricity and water and endeavour to keep our technology up to date. The following measures also help us to minimise our energy consumption:

• New ventilation technology with individual control in F&B
• Energy-saving water heater in the lobby
• Use of only water-soluble paints for painting work in the hotel
• District heating & district cooling: no more emissions from recooling plants & energy savings
• Moving lights & use of LED lights
• Server reduction to save electricity
• Building management system (since 2021)
• Expansion of the car fleet with e-cars & hybrid models
• Heat recovery pump (e.g. dishwasher water is fed back into the natural cycle and used for heating)

 

Waste management
To ensure the best possible waste disposal and processing, we also document our waste production and are always looking for recycling opportunities to minimise our consumption of resources. We also pay attention to

• Waste separation in the hotel
• Biomaster, which shreds food waste and processes it into biogas & soil
• Deep-fryer fat is filtered & recycled 4 times; then collected, cleaned and processed into biofuel
• Internal reuse of cardboard packaging etc.
• Recycling of bottles, jars, printer cartridges etc.
• Recycling of shampoo, shower gel & soaps in collaboration with "Clean the World"
• In progress: Kempinski Hotels' "Plastic Ban" initiative

 

 

Social Responsibility
As a member of a global luxury hotel chain, the well-being of our employees and the local community is particularly important to us. We contribute to promoting health and strengthening social solidarity by supporting various social initiatives and projects. Among others, we offer various sports activities for our employees as part of the hotel's fitness initiative "Zamma Sportln".

We also support the Clemens-Maria-Children's Home in Munich by organising a variety of events at our hotel - including Easter crafts, Christmas biscuit baking, etiquette courses and job application training.

As part of the BE Health Programme project initiated by Kempinski, we cooperate with the ASB Wünschewagen München/Oberbayern. Find detailed information here. 

Next steps
Although we have already taken significant sustainability measures in our operations and proactively adopted them in our hotel management, we are always looking for innovations and ways to improve our processes. Therefore, we are focussing on the following next steps to continue pursuing our sustainability goals:

• Completely sustainable cleaning products for back-of-house
• Switching from portioned coffee in the banquet to sustainable alternatives: Moving away from aluminium capsules and converting the machines
• Pilot project: "waste scales" to monitor/analyse food waste & draw conclusions from it