Hotel operators are taking steps to promote green travel, and reduce waste from single-use toiletries and discarded food.
The average hotel guest produces two to three times more trash per day than they do at home, a study by the Industrial Technology Research Institute has shown, said Hsiao Teng-yuan (蕭登元), the chair of National Kaohsiung University of Hospitality and Tourism’s Department of Leisure and Recreation Management.
In addition to waste produced by single-use toiletries, many hotel restaurants also cause excessive food waste, Hsiao said on Sunday, adding that some hotel operators have waste companies transport food waste to pig farms to be used as feed.
The amount of food waste produced by non-hotel restaurants could also become a serious problem for Taiwan, he added.
Restaurants can only ask guests to take only what they can eat to prevent food waste, Hsiao said.
To encourage green travel, LDC Hotels & Resorts Group this year started offering a 10 percent discount on room rates to guests who bring their own toiletries in some of its hotels.
Giardino, a buffet restaurant that was managed by the group’s affiliate FDC International Hotels Corp, in 2016 partnered with a food bank to deliver surplus food to low-income households and elderly people, the group said.
The group is assessing surplus food plans for its other restaurants after Giardino closed earlier this month, it said.
Leofoo Tourism Group has announced that from next month it will not provide single-use toiletries or refill supplies for multi-night stays at its hotels, unless guests specifically ask for them.
Guests at Leofoo Resort Guanshi who bring their own toiletries and reusable cups are to receive discounts on their purchases, Leofoo said.
Its hotels go through 39,975 sets of toothbrush and toothpaste, 7,750 razors and nearly 8,000 shower caps per month on average, Leofoo added.
Regent Taipei said it places cards on beds and in bathrooms to encourage guests to reuse their linens or towels during multi-night stays.
The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) in March last year began requiring large-scale produce vendors to publish online the amount and destination of discarded food products.
From March last year to April, 1,273 vendors covered by the regulation discarded a total of 6,630.4 tonnes of food products, or more than 500 tonnes per month on average, EPA data showed.
The majority of the discarded food products were delivered to pig farms or composting facilities, the EPA said.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS