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IHG Green Engage system
Our online sustainability platform provides our hotels around the world with the tools they need to operate in environmentally-friendly ways.
IHG Green Engage provides our hotels with more than 200 Green Solutions, helping them manage and report their use of energy, carbon, water and waste, and minimise their overall utility costs and environmental impact. We make it a global standard for all hotels to utilise the platform and we recognise their progress through four levels of certification.
The system works to:
- Provide hotels with action plans and targets to reduce their impact on the environment
- Set and track property-specific reduction goals for carbon, energy, water and waste, and demonstrate potential cost savings associated with a plan
- Use data to provide customised environmental performance benchmarking, taking into account hotel location, brand and outfitting
- Feed a hotel’s IHG Green Engage certification status to our booking channels, allowing guests to make more informed decisions about where they stay
Carbon and energy
With hotels operating 24 hours a day, servicing the many needs of guests, the energy consumption across the industry represents around 1% of total global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Given our scale and operations across more than 100 countries, we believe the best approach to reducing and managing carbon emissions comes from working hand-in-hand with all our hotels and third-party owners to change our own behaviours, before considering to purchase carbon offsets.
Science-based targets
In 2019, we set 2030 science-based targets to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. Looking at our ambitious long-term growth plans, including a pipeline of nearly 2,000 hotels, setting science-based targets is a stretch ambition, but one that we recognise the importance of.
We’re committed to reducing absolute scope 1, 2 and 3 greenhouse gas emissions from our owned, leased and managed hotels by 15% by 2030*.
We’re reducing scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions from our franchised hotels by 46% per square metre by 2030*.
*from a 2018 base year
Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD)
Building on the work we have done to set our science-based targets, we have made a formal commitment to implement the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) and in 2020 we will be developing a disclosure roadmap for the coming years.
Water
We recognise the risks our business and local communities face from water scarcity and pollution and are taking steps to ensure this precious resource is managed sustainably.
Water stress impacts over 40% of the global population and is anticipated to rise further, according to the UN. More than 1.7 billion of the world’s population currently live in river basins, where water use exceeds its recharge, and the problem will get worse as the population grows.
Building on our 2016 comprehensive water risk assessment, in 2019, we refreshed our risk mapping, encompassing our entire global estate of open and pipeline hotels, to ensure we are continuing to identify areas that are facing, or at risk of facing water scarcity.
UN CEO Water Mandate
In February 2020, our CEO, Keith Barr signed a commitment of membership to the UN Global Compact, CEO Water Mandate. This represents a pledge to six core commitments that mobilises business leaders on water, sanitation, and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Waste
Every day in our hotels around the world, millions of items are used, from food and plastics to linens and soaps. We see a real opportunity to help our guests have a more sustainable stay by reducing levels of waste in our properties.
The IHG Green Engage system provides guidance to IHG branded hotels on how to manage their waste, and through the tool we encourage hotels to create a waste management plan that sets out how they are going to handle, store and dispose of waste, both on and off-site.
Working with representatives across the business we have mapped out the areas of waste to prioritise, considering environmental impact, operational requirements and guest experience.
Bulk bathroom amenities
In July 2019, building on our 2018 pledge to remove plastic straws from our hotels, we announced our intention to remove single use miniature bathroom amenities from our entire estate, across all brands. We currently use an average of 200 million of these tiny toiletries every year, and by switching to bulk-size products during 2021, we will significantly reduce our plastic waste. IHG was the first global hotel group to make this commitment and we are delighted to have seen a number of industry peers follow suit.
