Whitbread pursues sustained green growth

Whitbread last week gave its environment report for the year 2008-9. The company said that its achievements for the year included a groundbreaking green hotel and a sustainably-sourced coffee policy.

The green hotel came in the shape of the Premier Inn at Tamworth. The hotel uses new environmental technologies as a showcase for the future. Whitbread’s Costa Coffee stores have put increased emphasis on sustainability by teaming up with the Rainforest Alliance to make more use of sustainable sourced coffee beans. To achieve Rainforest Alliance certification, farms must ensure that the coffee-growers and the land itself are carefully supported and renewed.

Whitbread also undertook research to gauge what its customers felt about its approach to the environmental matters. The company is now using the research as the basis for a “new, holistic corporate responsibility strategy”. Whitbread is using its WINcard to measure its progress on this strategy and it wants to motivate all of its ‘stakeholders to help achieve its goals’. Whitbread’s aim for next year is to emphasise sustainability, whilst giving its customers great value. It says that its one priority is to “stay relentlessly focused on value and on the customer”. Whitbread says that its environmental management has helped it to reduce costs. This is the seventh year of its environmental reporting.

24 August 2009