Environmental effort

As part of our environmental focus we have decided to aim for the STRINGEST environmental requirements within the hotel industry. Therefore we will certify our hotels with the official Nordic ecolabel, the Swan.

For Rica Hotels, The Swan certification mean that we will make changes to the way we operate our hotels. It also means that we have great expectations of our suppliers to act in accordance to our environmental requirements.

We demand for example that all the laundry services we use are environmentally certified. Suppliers involved in renovating and expansion of our hotels must act in accordance with our environmental requirements. Suppliers of cleaning products must provide environmentally labelled products, deliver dosage systems and even come up with equipment that we can even clean without the help of chemicals. We will alter our breakfast and lunch service to ensure that no disposable items are being used. We will improve in sorting all the waste in more fractions and at some hotels we will even implement a machine for composting our own organic waste.

Rica Hotels' objective is to label 50 hotels by the end of 2010. The first 20 hotels have to be Swan labelled by the end of 2008.

Local Food
The reason fort he project has been to strengthen the unique gastronomic identity based on Norwegian food culture. Furthermore, the project will contribute to the development and growth of small scale food producers which contributes to our environment policy of reducing our carbon footprint.

By relying on locally produced food, Rica Hotels contributes not only to viable management, use and preservation of biological diversity, but also to:
- Less transport = reduced climate emissions and reduced road throughput
- Less need for cooling = reduced energy use

In addition, may of the local producers deliver organic products, which means that the use of organic products increases day by day.

So far, eight hotels throughout the country have become involved in the initiative. At each of these hotels, the guests can select locally produced items from the menu.

Throughout the year we hope to welcome another 20 hotels to the project.