Hamburg, 9 January 2023
The year 2023 started with an exciting event at the Hotel Hafen Hamburg: our first Sustainability Day.
With rousing workshops from our partners and a plenary session beforehand, in which our plans, successes and challenges were presented transparently, we were able to give all participants something to take away with them on how each individual can make the world a little bit better.
After months of preparation, we were finally able to realise our first Sustainability Day on 9 January.
In five sessions, we welcomed almost 300 employees of our two hotels as well as 70 customers and partners in the evening.
Starting with a plenary session in the ballroom of our sister hotel Empire Riverside Hotel, where hotel director Enrico Ungermann and two members of the internal sustainability project team reported on our path to a more sustainable company, the participants were then able to take part in the workshops that our partners had selected in advance.
We have summarised below which workshops were offered, what we have to report about our path to sustainability and which challenges we have already had to face.
Let's clean up our Hamburg!
Water for all, all for water!
Modern Beekeeping.
For Hamburg's children - We are here!
Environmentally friendly alternatives for the future.
Restricted area: St. Pauli
At the beginning of 2022, we established a project group to address the issue of sustainability at the Empire Riverside Hotel and Hotel Hafen Hamburg, develop a project plan and work together to make our businesses more sustainable.
Consisting of the technical, kitchen, purchasing, human resources, sales, reservations, marketing and management departments, we have thus created a team made up of all the departments concerned to consider all the pillars of sustainability and to be able to advise and act with the relevant expertise.
In our first sustainability blog, we have written a little more about our project plan, our first successes and ideas. Get an overview of the start of our project team "Sustainability for our hotels" here.
In developing our project plan, we were guided by the "Green Key" sustainability label for hotels, and in a long, detailed period of brainstorming, we identified the themes we wanted to work on and address at the outset. Each of these main topics consists of hundreds of sub-topics, of which only a small part is shown in the mind map.
Click here for the translation of the presentation below.
Through numerous measures that we have implemented since 2019, a large amount of electricity, water and waste has already been saved.
These measures included:
- Installation of water-saving showers and taps.
- Urinals without any water at all
- Kitchen appliances with reduced water consumption
- Supplier agreement on packaging take-back
- Reusable instead of disposable -> reduction of portioned products
- Energy efficient lighting (75%)
- Motion detectors in back office and public areas
- Automatically controlled cooker bonnets
*We compare 2022 with 2019 because we can only draw a financial year with reliable data in the comparison from the period before the pandemic and lockdown.
Saved: 9.3% Equivalent: annual consumption 37 households
Saved: 44.5% Equivalent to: 6 Olympic swimming pools
No measurement has taken place before 2021 - a lot of waste has already been reduced.
After our brainstorming in the sustainability team, we decided to make ourselves measurable through a sustainability seal.
In our presentation at the Sustainability Day, we explained why we chose the "GreenSign" sustainability seal for hotels, what the catalogue of criteria includes and what exactly convinced us.
You can view the certification process and our complete audit report here.
Some of the projects we had on our project plan had to be discarded after we had checked them.
In our presentation, we talked transparently about the fact that, as much as we would like to, not everything is possible.
For example, the introduction of a sustainable conference package - here the demand on the part of the customers is missing, which is why other packages would continue to be booked preferentially, as many still do not see the higher price as justified.
In addition, it is hardly possible in the hotel industry to introduce a clear regulation for family-friendly working hours. Due to the constant operation of a hotel, shift work cannot be avoided. Of course, we try to find a suitable solution for each department - a generalisation is simply not possible.
Another challenge was the formulation of measurable sustainability goals. Since we are still at the very beginning, it is difficult for us to already determine whether it would be more worthwhile to save on gas or on electricity. Or in other areas? And what percentage is appropriate and feasible? We will ask ourselves all these questions within the next 12 months and aim to be able to present smart goals at the next Sustainability Day.
We may not have been able to define measurable goals yet, but definitely a lot of goals in mind.
We may not have been able to define measurable goals yet, but we have them: We still have goals in mind.
Each day, we want to improve a little and contribute to a more sustainable humanity through small steps.
Sustainable development is not a trend that is "just being talked about". We want it to be our top priority right now, and we want it to be treated with the same priority in 12 months or 12 years as it has been in the past months.
Furthermore, we want to continue supporting social projects such as oClean, Viva con Agua, Cafee mit Herz, provide a stage, collect donations and do good with them.
We want all employees to have the space and freedom for individuality and to fill the word "equality" with life - we don't care where you come from, what you believe in or what you feel like.
Thank you to our partners for your active participation in our Sustainability Day. Thanks to you, our participants were able to gain a wonderfully varied insight into the three pillars of sustainability.
The non-profit GmbH oclean was founded by the three Hamburg sisters Hannah, Lena and Marie in 2019 to stop just talking about sustainability and start taking action. The vision is: No more waste on Hamburg's streets and a greater awareness of circular economy and resource conservation. With colourful and modern communication, regular waste collection campaigns and workshops, we raise awareness among young and old and show that the unattractive topic of waste can be fun and must be approached creatively. Everyone is welcome and can join
join us. After all, everyone produces rubbish every day and more and more of it ends up on our streets and in the Elbe and Alster.
In the workshop there was:
Viva con Agua is an international network of people and organisations working for clean drinking water. From the beginning, everything followed one vision: WATER FOR ALL. In the meantime, there are many thousands of people who volunteer for Viva con Agua. At numerous events, in football stadiums and concerts (e.g. at the Empire Riverside) you can see committed people raising awareness for the issue of water. Everyone can participate is the motto. In addition, the organisation collects donations digitally in order to implement its work. In the workshop, the following questions were answered
You would like to
and what does Viva con Agua actually have to do with hotels?!
Learn moreBees play a key role in our global ecosystem. With their pollination services, they are elementary for biodiversity.
But bees need our help. In Europe alone, about 20% of bee colonies die every year.
While in 1950 there were still about 2.5 million bee colonies in Germany, today there are only about 950,000 - this means a decline by almost two thirds, the reasons for which are manifold.
A corporate bee project means visible environmental protection on site and active support for local biodiversity. PLACE4BEES was founded with the aim of strengthening modern and healthy beekeeping in the city and surrounding areas. We are a passionate team with a lot of expertise in beekeeping and we are united by our fascination for the world of bees and the desire to make beekeeping structurally strong enough to prepare a good future for our local honey bees.
The workshop was about:
The aid project "Sperrgebiet" is a shelter for girls and women who engage in poverty prostitution. The project has been around for more than 30 years. With us, the women and girls can find peace and safety. In addition, we offer them medical care, counselling and help. Our goal is to help women and girls in prostitution to develop perspectives for their future lives - also outside of prostitution.
Last year, 863 women sought help in the restricted area - and the trend is rising. Of these, 566 were younger than 30 and even more than 100 women were younger than 21. In order to be able to help as many women and girls in prostitution as possible, an important factor of our work is the so-called "outreach work". Street social workers contact women and girls in street prostitution and in prostitution centres to make them aware of our services and to support them with everyday problems.
In the workshop, a short tour of St. Pauli was made and they talked about it and answered questions about where the problems of girls and women on St. Pauli lie.
What do fungi, algae, worms, artificial intelligences and our urine have in common? - They all have the potential to save our world! Find out why in our workshop.
In our everyday lives, we are constantly bombarded with the concept of sustainability. From the recycled shampoo bottle to the reusable coffee mug to the electric car - we buy products that promise to make the world a better place. But what is really sustainable and how do we find out where we are being tricked? Do we really have to look to the future with horror and what can we actively do so that our children can still enjoy our planet?
In this workshop, the questions of our time were dealt with together. Some crazy-sounding solution concepts and innovative ideas were presented that give hope again. Together we visualise a greener future!
Zeit für Zukunft - Mentoren für Kinder e.V. (Time for the Future - Mentors for Children) is a non-profit, voluntary mentoring programme for the individual support of children and young people aged 6 to 16 in Hamburg and the surrounding area.
Not all children have the same good starting conditions in life. It can help if there is someone outside of the home and school who can relate to them: someone with whom they can experience beautiful things, but also share their worries. That's what our mentors are there for. They are listeners, encouragers, friends and providers of opportunities.
The mentors of Time for the Future are also role models. That is why we assign a female mentor to girls and a male mentor to boys.
The so-called tandems of mentor (adult) and mentee (child) are long-term and last at least one year. Through the 1:1 relationships, we help the children to develop their potential. It has been proven that we increase their educational and participation opportunities, because these are unequally distributed in Germany. In the long term, our association thus promotes the cohesion of our society.
Photographer Saskia Giebel captured our Sustainability Day in photographs.