St Michael's Green Journey

Stage 3 - Critical Assessment

It was important for us to quantify our practices in terms of carbon emissions. This allows us to have a benchmark for which to compare any future changes. There are no hard and fast rules for calculating a carbon footprint except transparency. In order to ensure that no one is being misled it is crucial that the methodology is presented alongside the final figure. The following provides an account of the approach we took.

Carbon Foot Printing

Nb- Our carbon footprint has been calculated with the help of The Carbon Trust and used methodologies based on the GHG Kyoto Protocol.

A carbon footprint is calculated accounting for both direct and indirect emissions.  Direct emissions refer to those practices which lead to carbon release as a direct result of the businesses activities including electricity used on site or petrol consumed by staff during work hours. All direct emissions need to be included in the calculation of a carbon footprint.  Indirect emissions are those created by parties involved with the organisation, but cannot be solely attributed to the practices of the business. These may include the petrol consumption of suppliers or customers. The indirect emissions to be included in the carbon footprint are at the discretion of each business; as long as they can be justified and any decisions are made public. Here at St Michael’s it has been decided that the emissions for which we are directly responsible is the electricity and gas consumed on site. For the indirect emissions we have chosen to include water used on site and also emissions involved in the removal and deposition of waste to landfill. We recognise that there are other factors for which we can control, yet are not directly responsible for. These maybe less easy to quantify in terms of kilograms of CO2 (or CO2 equivalent) and include the water, petrol or electricity used by suppliers or our laundering services, for example. Even though we are not able to quantify progress in these areas through a reduction of our carbon footprint, we have documented what measures we are undertaking and still strive to invest as much energy into these factors.

Once the boundaries have been laid, it is then important to pick a base period. This allows for a benchmark to be calculated, whereby any future calculations can be compared. For the entire base period a database should be compiled detailing consumption for all relevant areas. This can then be transferred into kilograms of carbon dioxide and totalled to provide the quantity emitted per annum. Emission factors, the value used to manipulate utility consumption (or similar) into kilograms of CO2 can be found on the Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) website or via the Carbon Trust.

During an audit undertaken by the Carbon Trust the hotels carbon footprint calculated by the consultant was shown to be approximately 496 tonnes. Initially we were encouraged that the carbon footprint for the year 2006/2007 decreased to around 454tonnes of CO2.  Although there is a significant drop over the two years calculation and the one carried out by the Green Team and this could be an indication that

strategies introduced as a result of the Carbon Trust report were successful, it is also hard to draw any concrete conclusions from this figure. Although similar methods were used during the calculation of both figures, it is likely that the indirect emissions incorporated into the computations may have varied slightly. 

- For the year 2007/2008 we were disappointed to see that our footprint had again increased to 505 tonnes of CO2. To try and understand why this might have happened and in an effort to make this figure less arbitrary we then calculated the kilograms of CO2 per residential guest. For the year 2006/2007 we reached a value of 14.8kg/CO2, yet in 2007/2008 this increased to 16.2. There are a couple of possible reasons for this.

- We know that this year has been a busier year for us at St Michael’s Hotel and Spa. As a multi-use organisation with gym and restaurant facilities we need to consider the implications of this on our carbon output.

We need to keep pushing forward and constantly addressing our environmental practices. As a business that is has been energy aware for some time it is easy to become complacent. However we now recognise that we should always be re-assessing present measures and looking for areas to improve.

To put these values into perspective, the average Britain produces 10.9 tonnes of C02/year, a midsized 30mpg car driving 12,000 miles a year will create about 3.55 tonnes and pop star Madonna has an average footprint of 1018 tonnes of C02/year. Furthermore for every trip of three miles walked instead of driven saves 2kg of C02 and by turning the thermostat at home down to 1 degree our personal footprint is cut by 300kg. This shows how our actions really do make a difference.