Here's How AccorHotels Is Reducing Its Environmental Footprint

In the global effort to reduce the environmental footprint generated by countless hotels rooms around the world, natural is the new white.

What does that mean exactly?

In the case of hotels, or at least one leading global hotel company, it means using new, non-chemically bleached, natural colored bed linens and towels that are less harmful to the environment.

To mark what’s known as “Planet 21 Day” – an annual day of actions by hotels to promote sustainable development – AccorHotels has just announced its new and unprecedented eco-friendly linen program, which is being implemented at more than 2,500 properties.

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“The first global hotel group to offer its guests natural colored linen, AccorHotels is marking a turning point in the hospitality sector by declaring “Natural is the new white!” as part of its overall policy to reduce the carbon footprint generated by its rooms,” the company said in a statement.

The effort will have countless environmental benefits, according to AccorHotels, including a 42 percent reduction of CO2 emissions, a 48 percent reduction in average water consumption and an 88 percent reduction in the volume of chemicals used in textile finishing.

The new textile products have been in use for more than a year at the vast majority of the company’s economy and midscale hotels in the United Kingdom.

Hotels in France and the rest of Europe will phase in the new linens and towels as contracts with laundry service providers, which are generally signed for three years, are renewed.

The company is aiming to have seven non-chemically bleached items in hotel rooms by 2021, including bathrobes, towels, bath mats, sheets, pillowcases and duvet covers.

The main characteristic of the new linens will be their visually recognizable ecru color, which is the natural color of cotton when it’s not subjected to the whitening process, which involves peroxides or acids.

When linens are not whitened, the fibers are not impacted by oxidization and as a result, they last as much as 20 to 25 percent longer.

As an added bonus, AccorHotels’ new program is impacting far more than just its own environmental footprint.

In order to care for the new linens and maintain their ecru color, laundry services have had to change their processes as well.

In the UK, some laundry service providers have already introduced a specific laundering method that has led dramatic reductions in their environmental impact, including a 75 percent reduction in water consumption, and a 25 percent decrease in C02 emissions.

The benefits of AccorHotels’ new linen program has been independently verified by the German Hohenstein Institute, a leading textiles research laboratory and institute in Europe.

Tests conducted on towels using the same finishing process revealed that an ecru colored towel is approximately 20 to 25 percent more durable than a white towel.

That increase in lifespan results in an impact reduction of between 9 and 16 percent per use.

Meanwhile, the 88 percent reduction in the volume of chemical products used in the finishing process translates into a savings of up to 80 percent in water use, a 50 percent reduction in aquatic ecotoxicity and a 25 percent reduction in land acidification during this stage of the lifecycle.