BeMed Business Club closes its pilot project "Towards a zero-plastic single-use hotel”

 After several months of work, the association Beyond Plastic Med (BeMed) and its Business Club unveil the results of the pilot project "Towards a zero-plastic single-use hotel" conducted within the InterContinental Marseille - Hotel Dieu, and announce the upcoming publication of a ready-to-use guide allowing its replication by other establishments.

With this pilot project, BeMed has demonstrated that it is possible to reduce the consumption of single-use plastics while engaging staff, without reducing the quality of customer service and without additional financial burdens for the facility.

In three months of testing, the InterContinental Marseille-Hotel Dieu has reduced its use of single-use plastic by more than 165 kg, while limiting the transfer of environmental impacts to a minimum. This success was made possible by obtaining a waiver from the InterContinental Hotels Group to switch, on request, to welcome products that were previously systematically available in each room. The staff, who were involved from the start of the project, were very pleased with the approach, which did not result in any extra work for the teams. The customer feedback was also positive, enabling the hotel to ensure the sustainability of the solutions tested. In addition to the environmental benefits, the hotel saved nearly €5,000 in just three months, which paid for the investments required to purchase the reusable alternatives.

The hotel industry, a major consumer of single-use plastics, will be faced with a ban in Europe in 2040. It is therefore essential to start thinking about this issue now. This is why, to accompany the change and facilitate the replication of the project "Towards a zero-plastic single-use hotel", BeMed is finalising a ready-to-use guide. It will include the methodology and the different stages of the project, advice and feedback, examples of proven alternatives and all the tools needed to deploy the approach.

To go further and have an impact on the Mediterranean, BeMed will also support the La Badira hotel, located in Hammamet in Tunisia, in adapting and replicating the approach.

In order to promote this project, several local and regional actors were present at the press conference: Mrs Anne Claudius-Petit, President of the Commission for Energy Transition, Waste Strategy and Air Quality of the Southern Region, Mrs Leslie Cherfils, General Manager of the InterContinental Marseille - Hotel Dieu, and Mrs Madelijn Vervoord, General Manager of the Southern France and Mediterranean area & General Manager of the InterContinental Lyon - Hotel Dieu. 

The project received financial support from the South Region. It relied on the expertise of various partners including ConsultantSeas, InOff Plastic, the École Nationale Supérieure d'Arts et Métiers (ENSAM) and the Institut Méditerranéen des Sciences de l'Information et de la Communication (IMSIC).