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Niranjan Khatri, general manager -Welcomenviron Initiatives, ITC hotels
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The chain practices enlightened sustainable development philosophy, however in a large organisation to take the vision down to the grass root level requires a strong management system and procedures for continuity, and most importantly, that all its associates constantly raise the bar of sustainability beyond the stipulated legislated standards specified by states. In a manner of speaking we have a internal policy of working beyond compliance.

What are the best practises that you have implemented so far that have improved the functioning of ITC hotels?

Firstly, we have reduced our water consumption by approximately 40%. By introducing rain water harvesting, when it was not mandatory, installing sewage treatment plants, initiating the concept of water swap, use of drip devices, using waterless urinals in our head office (the ITC Green Centre at Gurgaon) and introducing water audits.

Secondly, we have reduced energy consumption by approx 12 to 15 % through a slew of energy saving methods like use of daylight, VFD-variable frequency drive motors, have shifted to CFL and LED lights, installed CFC chillers of hi-energy efficiency.

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What would be your advice to other hoteliers looking to tread the ‘green path?’ What challenges do you foresee?

The green path has three trajectories- low, medium and high cost. Depending on financial circumstances hotels can start anywhere suitable. It is important to move away from upfront costs, to life cycle analysis and life cycle costs. In the ITC Green centre (a LEED platinum rated) building we have reduced our energy consumption by 51% and water consumption by 40 % by design intent.

Being pioneers, we had a cost overrun of 15% which we will recover in five years time.

The next two green buildings which came up after ours had a cost overrun of 8% and 4% respectively, which is indicative of the trend of declining costs.

The challenges do exist. People get intimidated easily and assume that adopting green standards is difficult and expensive. The idea is not to get intimidated.

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