Time to serve a circular economy

A circular economy could boost the hospitality sector by reducing costs and making resources go further while at the same cutting greenhouse gas emissions, a new report finds. 

The ‘Hospitality Spotlight Report’ explores how circular economy business models, which place an emphasis on enabling materials to be re-used and wasted less, can play a vital role in ensuring the hospitality industry is more efficient and cost-effective, as well as less polluting.

The report, part of the NICER (National Interdisciplinary Circular Economy Research) programme, saw researchers run consultations including two workshops with 42 stakeholders from across the hospitality sector and its supply chains in which they explored the challenges and opportunities for circular economy adoption and measures of success.

Life

It advocates for a ‘whole-system approach’ to eliminating waste and pollution that focuses on circulating products and materials during the ‘inflow’, ‘use’ and ‘outflow’ stages – an approach it says has the potential to reduce emissions, boost resource productivity and reduce costs.

It details initiatives that reduce demand for materials and resources at the outset, such as creative design agency Object.Space.Place’s (OSP) approach to circular refurbishment, working with clients in hospitality industry to embed circular principles into their refitting plans so as to prioritise longevity, energy efficiency and the use of low-impact materials.

It highlights mattress maker Silentnight’s initiative to tackle low rates of mattress recycling through redesigning their products to use fewer materials (with those materials used chosen due to ease of recycling) and a new modular design where a top ‘comfort layer’ can be replaced, reducing a mattress’ carbon footprint by 23 per cent.

Initiatives such as Loopcycle (now part of ImpactLoop) help tackle the amount of working equipment that businesses no longer use, with their digital platform helping to trace, manage and recover physical products throughout their lifecycle, as they work with businesses to identify opportunities to refurbish, reuse or resale unused equipment, while making significant cost savings.

Other initiatives aim to decrease waste by extending the life of materials, such as a new recycling programme by the Textiles Services Association designed to maintain the value of high-quality textiles through future-use cycles, aiming to address the 6,000 tonnes of textile waste generated each year by hotels.

Optimisation

The hospitality sector is the UK’s sixth largest industrial sector, contributing £103bn per year to the economy and supporting 2.74 million jobs.

However, its environmental impact is largely negative, with 2.8m tonnes of waste generated per year at a cost of £3.2bn, and the sector emitting around one per cent of the UK’s total greenhouse emissions.