The “Exceeding expectations for planet 21- Platinum Level” award went to ibis Styles Nairobi Westlands during an ACCOR Hotels General Managers Gala Dinner held at Movenpick Ambassador Hotel Accra. ibis Styles Nairobi was up against 23 other hotels in the Economy and Midscale brands within the Sub-Saharan Africa & Indian Ocean region. The platinum level is the highest on the sustainability meter after achieving the Gold and Bronze levels.

Planet 21 is Accor Hotel’s sustainability commitment to provide a positive hospitality experience by working with its employees, involve its customers, innovate with its partners and work with local communities towards making the community they operate within better. The sustainable practises and positive results revolve on actions such as waste management, energy conservation, reforestation projects, and protection of children against abuse, supporting local products and participating in causes that improve the community.

The projects that led to the hotels victory include:

• Implementing the WATCH programme, which stands for We Act Together for Children. The hotel has stepped up efforts to eradicate the sexual exploitation of children by training the teams on sexual tourism. Ibis Styles Nairobi Westlands is currently supporting the Mary Faith Children’s home that aims to rehabilitate children that have been victims of sexual abuse
• Supporting causes such as Women4Cancer-Breast Cancer awareness and prevention.
• Rhino Charge-Wildlife conservation in the Aberdare Forest
• The First Women only walk that aims to protect against sexual gender based violence
• The hotel encourages long staying guests to reuse bed linen and towels to change after second night use as opposed to daily. This way, there is conservation of water and reduced pollution from the cleaning chemicals used
• Energy Management practices are in place for example having motion detecting lights in areas like guest corridors that don’t need lights to be on at all times
• Eliminating plastic bottled water and soda, straws and packaging from the hotel restaurants and bars and replacing with biodegradable/recyclable materials
• Recycling of waste water from the hotel’s reverse osmosis plant that is used to water gardens and is also used for cleaning
• Maintaining a kitchen herb garden where our Chefs harvest herbs for daily use
• Implementing a Zero food waste policy to both hotel guests and staff
• Waste management is in place such as recycling used cooking oil that ordinarily goes to waste to
• washing soap that is used by our housekeeping teams
• Separating our garbage into kitchen waste that goes to composting, paper and glass waste that goes to recycling

This award goes on to indicate that all efforts by the ibis Styles Nairobi Westlands team to save our environment are worthwhile and community development and conservation begins with you and I.