Radisson Blu Hotel Lietuva a Green Key Hotel

BRUSSELS, June 10, 2011 - Radisson Blu Hotel Lietuva in Vilnius has held onto its Green Key Hotel status, which it has held since 2004. The Green Key was created to raise awareness in the tourism and leisure trade about how to run a environmentally responsible business. To obtain The Green Key a hotel has to fulfil a long list of environmental requirements, which in themselves contain a number of criteria. Apart from purely environmental demands, the criteria also includes requirements on policy and action plans. The Hotel in Vilnius became involved in The Green Key project to ensure it was keeping an eye on costs to ensure the best prices and maintain a competitive position in the hotel market as well as to address concerns regarding the health, well-being and safety of its clients and employees and a concern for the surrounding environment. The hotel in Vilnius city center became involved in the project in a number of ways. These included saving water by washing laundry less often and installing water saving devices. It also aimed to save heat and electricity by using low energy light bulbs, installing equipment with a standby function and installing programmable thermostats. Rubbish is now pre-sorted so that a large amount of it can be recycled and the hotel started using eco-friendly materials and products such as non-chlorine bleaches and phosphate-free detergents. Finally, the hotel made other changes such as sourcing local food, providing on-going training for staff about the environmental activities of the company, informing the public and guests about the environmental activities of the company and improving the air quality in the hotels. All these changes will benefit the Radisson Blu hotels in Vilnius guests as they will now receive local food, fresher air, a cleaner environment, and they can get involved in the process by doing things such as pre-sorting their own rubbish or using towels for an extra day so they require less washing. Radisson Blu Hotel Lietuva is also taking part in the Rezidor Responsible Business program. This covers three main fields; taking responsibility for the health and safety of employees and customers, respecting social and ethical issues in the company, as well as in the community and reducing negative impact on the environment. The hotel also took part in the Lithuanian Environmental cleaning Action DARMON 2011, and Earth Hour 2011, where it dimmed the lights in the lobby and sky bar for an hour and switched off the lights in the Riverside restaurant which the guests ate a candle lit dinner.

Melvin Wylie