Hotel Zonheuvel onderscheiden met Greenkey Goud!

The Green Key is an international standard for businesses in the tourism and leisure industry,  in the market for meeting and conference venues, who are serious and can be controlled with sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), with care for the organization and nature environment.

The Green Key ensures the voluntary commitment of the company takes care of the  environment without any regulations requires them. The Green Key is a communicative tool for the sustainable image of the company to guests, business partners and governments.

To qualify for the Green Key, entrepreneurs must take action on many environmental issues and CSR. These measures are partly compulsory, partly optional. There are three levels of the Green Key in The Netherlands: Bronze, Silver and Gold. The more an entrepreneur does optional actions, the higher the level of the Green Key is.

The sustainability label Green Key is part of five programs of FEE, the Foundation for Environmental Education. This global organization has the objective of knowledge and appreciation of nature and promotes the environment as broadly as possible. One program is the Green Key is for tourist accommodation. Another FEE program for the tourism industry indicates the Blue Flag for clean beaches and marinas. In addition FEE has programs for goal-oriented youth and students. These are Young Reporters for the Environment, Eco-Schools and Learning about Forest.

There are over 1,600 companies in 18 countries worldwide who joined the international Green Key label. In the beginning of 2011the 350th accommodation was certified in the Nethelrands. The Green Key is carried by the Netherlands Foundation Certified Environmental, Safety and Quality (KMVK). The inspections are carried out by external inspectors.

Accommodations with a Green Key meet strict standards of sustainability, environment and CSR. These standards focus on internal and external communications, sustainability in the management of the company, use of energy, gas and water, waste, transportation, food & beverage, gardening, sustainable measures in the office are taken, paper consumption, type of printing, sustainable purchasing etc.

Water - precious resource

There seems to be so much water on our planet ... However, 97% of it is a salt water and the remaining 3% is the solid ice forms in the North and South Poles. Water collection becoming more complex and cotly, with increasing use of chemicals and desiccation of nature. So there is a reason for the available conservation. Each day we use 135 liters of drinking water per person, over 50% is typically used for applications such as unnecessary flushing the toilet. In Zonheuvel hotel we use filtered rainwater for toilet flushing. This means no unnecessary reprocessing of water, no unnecessary transport over long distances, no unnecessary consumption of groundwater, lower peak load on our sewer system and therefore less pollution of our surface.