Waste not, want not

A stay at the Fairmont Chateau Whistler may be a luxurious treat, but behind the scenes its staff are busy saving the environment, says Stephen Wood

You can probably imagine the bizarre and unpleasant things that get thrown into hotel garbage. But in one particular case you don't have to, because the Fairmont Chateau Whistler, at the ski resort of Whistler/Blackcomb in British Columbia, regularly conducts a "waste audit" of all the refuse the hotel produces in a 24-hour period.

The waste studied in its September 2001 audit – a mix of 63 per cent organic matter, 16 per cent recyclable materials, 21 per cent pure garbage and a dash of hazardous waste – included a pair of fuzzy pink handcuffs, a dump-truck toy, stuffed animals, US flags, a substantial number of used condoms, hypodermic needles and a half-portion of beef tenderloin. "It would have suggested a pretty exciting evening if they had all come from the same room, but alas they did not," said the hotel's sustainability co-ordinator, 28-year-old Dan Wilson. That, the third audit, brought the total of waste the hotel had sifted and studied to 1,545kg.

The Fairmont Chateau Whistler (I'll call it FCW, to save waste) is "one of the truly great ski hotels in the world", reckons The Good Skiing Guide. A massive, 550-room structure set alongside the Blackcomb lift base, it regularly wins awards not only from North American travel magazines but also from titles such as Successful Meetings and Meetings and Conventions magazines. With room rates that rise from CAN$249 (£100) plus tax for a Standard room to CAN$1,649 (£670) for a Fairmont Gold Executive Suite, it is not cheap; but nor is it uncomfortable, stressful or mean. Its vast lobby area is called The Great Hall, and nobody could argue with that; it has an Ayurvedic spa, and an excellent, Pacific-Rim-ish restaurant; downstairs there are ski valets, and out back there's a cigar pit where US guests can smoke and discuss the Cuban products they are denied back home.

With its excess of bathroom products and soft furnishings (guests have to dig deep into a pile of scatter cushions to find their bed), FCW is typical of luxury hotels. But below stairs there is a steely determination to avoid waste. New staff are required to affirm that they understand the hotel's recycling and composting policy and the implications of not following it – which include their being disciplined. FCW's charming director of public relations, Sonya Hwang, shows a rare contempt for soft-and-wooly "green" thinking; and Dan Wilson – who calls himself the sustainability co-ordinator although his business card uses the vaguer "environmental co-ordinator" – admits that FCW's long-term goal is to reduce its solid waste to zero.

When the Fairmont hotel group launched a "green partnership" programme in the late 1980s, FCW proved fertile ground because the hotel was new (it opened in 1989) and its long-term general manager David Roberts – he left earlier this year – was supportive. Its location helped, too. Whistler is, says Mr Wilson, "a place where there's a passion for the environment: it's one of the key things that draws people here. So sustainability is an easier pitch than elsewhere". But Whistler also has high charges for waste collection – the highest in British Columbia at CAN$76 (£30) per metric tonne. It's not hard to make a case for composting and recycling when it's cheaper than putting waste in the dustbin.

The disposal of organic waste in an area where there are bears is, however, a challenge. To forage in the wild is better for the animals than scavenging around town; it's safer for humans, too. So the first project – pulping FCW's kitchen waste into slush and spreading it on the golf course – had to be abandoned: as Ms Hwang says, "ours proved the most popular golf course in Whistler among the bears". Flushing the waste into the sewers and feeding it to worms in "vermicomposting bins" both proved impractical (the latter because the worms didn't eat fast enough). Now, though, FCW's organic waste – full of nutrients – is hauled away by a local company which turns it into compost pellets for gardeners.

The hotel's other sustainability projects include water saving with low-flow shower-heads and toilets, and changing bed-linen every three days unless guests specify otherwise (only one or two a month do). It is also cutting energy-use by switching from incandescent to fluorescent bulbs, which reduce the maximum power used in an average room from 800 kilowatts per hour to 200. And because the new bulbs last four or five times as long, there are reduced labour costs (for bulb-changing) plus contingent environmental benefits in material-use, transportation and emissions. The hotel is investing CAN$140,000 (£57,000) in the changeover; but the energy savings alone will justify the investment.

The energy-efficient bulbs do, however, contain more mercury – which, 10,000 light-hours away, will cause a disposal problem. As Dan Wilson says, this highlights "the need for systems thinking: you can't deal with energy use and waste-management issues independently". Which is where the commitment of the Whistler community (FCW, the ski-area management, the municipality and others) to the Natural Step philosophy comes in.

Created in 1989 by Dr Karl-Henrik Robert, a Swedish oncologist who traced the cause of an increase in leukaemia among children to pollution, the Natural Step formulates basic ground rules for analysing and addressing systemic environmental problems. It is, says Mr Wilson, sustainability's equivalent of the rules of football: "Before teams can play they must agree on the principle of success – that whoever scores most goals is the winner. The Natural Step provides a common language so that those involved in sustainability can agree on a common destination. And when you agree on a destination, you do usually get there. If you decide to go to Toronto, you rarely end up in Florida."

But before you can decide which way to go, you need to know where you are. Hence the waste audits. Sara Bryanton, a 23-year-old FCW guest services employee who has volunteered for recent audits, says "you find some pretty mean stuff" in the garbage. But also prosaic stuff: "We weigh every type of garbage, down to plastic stirrers. And since we found a lot of waxed-paper water cups – which can't be recycled – in last year's audit, the hotel has now replaced them with recyclable plastic cups."

Currently, 82 per cent of FCW's waste is diverted from landfill. But there remains a cloud over Dan Wilson's horizon. Not the troubled Canadian economy (which is making investment in sustainability a harder sell) but the hotel's emissions, "the biggest source of waste from our operations". Amazingly, propane use produces an estimated 3,000 metric tonnes, three times the quantity of solid waste. In terms of emissions, that's where the hotel is; what is its destination? "Again, our goal is zero emissions," says Mr Wilson.

Inghams (020- 8780 4433; www.inghams.co.uk) offers packages to Fairmont Chateau Whistler (00 1 604 938 8000; www.chateauwhistler.com) from £871 per person per week room-only (based on two sharing), including return Air Canada flights and transfers, plus free use of the hotel's leisure and spa area. More information from Tourism Whistler (00 1 604 664 5625; www.tourismwhistler.com)