Brigitta Witt – Hyatt Vice President of Corporate Social Responsibility

Meet one of PINK’s Top 10 Women in Sustainability, 2011!

By Rachel Pomerance

The best in the business lead by example. So when an A/C unit fizzled at the Grand Hyatt Singapore, Hyatt took the long view. And one chiller on the fritz became an opportunity to revamp the entire cooling system and launch the hotel’s Green Energy Management (GEM) project. A $2.5 million investment in a new A/C system saved some 65,000 cubic meters of water in the first year and annually saves the hotel more than $1 million.

Moreover, the project became a model for cooling hotels and office buildings around the world and paid for itself in three years.

Hyatt’s solution to the question: How can we inspire sustainable living among our more than 80,000 associates and millions of guests across 45 countries?

• Green Teams: Local teams from every area within the hotel work to carry out Hyatt’s companywide sustainability initiatives. Hyatt Green Teams identify opportunities to improve environmental performance and engage in local community initiatives at each hotel. Green Teams also lead employees through the Hyatt Earth Training – a six-hour program focused on ways each employee can reduce waste, carbon emissions, water and energy consumption at work and at home. To date, approximately 18,000 Hyatt associates have gone through the program.

• Benchmarking Usage: Hyatt EcoTrack benchmarks energy use, water consumption, waste generation and greenhouse gas emissions for Hyatt-managed, full-service hotels globally. This platform tracks energy, water consumption, and carbon dioxide emissions by brand, region and hotel. 

• Encouraging Guests to Go Green: Hyatt’s Meet and Be Green program offers group meetings a 3 percent rebate on the cost of food and beverage and guest rooms. It requires meeting planners and guests to pledge that they will recycle during the meeting, use products with 100 percent recycled content and select locally grown seasonal foods when planning the menu, among other environmentally responsible choices.

What’s next?

• By 2015, Hyatt aims to reduce its global energy consumption, waste generation and carbon emissions by 25 percent and its water consumption by 20 percent. By that time, Witt says, “it is my hope that sustainability is so second nature to us, it is part and parcel of how we do things – not the exception but the norm – and ingrained in everything we do and how we do it.”

Rachel Pomerance, a writer and public relations professional, specializes in sustainable transportation at Pomerance & Associates. The all-female firm, which is owned by her mother, Barbara Pomerance, manages the communications for the Washington Auto Show®.