The Connacht Hotel - Our Carbon Offsetting Programme

We caught up with Leanne Nolan one of the green team members at the Connacht Hotel Galway. Leanne told us all about the hotels recent carbon off setting programme and how they worked out the cost of offsetting the carbon impact of each of their guests.

Our Story So Far

Last year, we introduced a new initiative as part of our sustainability policy – our “Offset Your Carbon Footprint” campaign. This initiative involves the planting of indigenous Irish trees to offset our carbon footprint. We give our leisure guests the option to choose to offset their carbon footprint at the time of booking on our website. This is done through an “Add-on” on our website as you proceed with your booking, the same way that guests would add on a dinner package. The Connacht Hotel are covering the cost of offsetting the carbon footprint from corporate meetings and stays.

We currently hold a Silver accreditation from Green Hospitality Ireland currently hold a Silver accreditation from Green Hospitality Ireland and as part of this, we complete a benchmark workbook each year. This workbook consists of comprehensive data collation regarding our energy & water usage, waste production, numbers of guests staying and numbers of customers dining in our restaurant. All this information together populates our carbon footprint for the year and the average footprint of a guest.

We used this information to work out the cost of offsetting the carbon footprint of a guest. We have had a very positive response from our guests to this initiative. In 2021, 313 trees were planted on behalf of our guests as part of this campaign.

Since the beginning of 2021, the Connacht Hospitality Group are gifting all employees of the group with a tree planted on their behalf for their birthdays. In 2021, we committed to planting 377 trees on behalf of our employees.

This is a total of 690 trees planted over the year.

This campaign has benefitted our overall Green Policy by helping us to reduce our overall carbon footprint. Since we began our “Green Journey” in 2018, we have reduced our carbon footprint by 37% and we are very proud of the hard work and efforts by our Green Team in implementing all the many initiatives that have contributed to this reduction.

Whats Next ?

Our newest initiative at the Connacht Hotel is the introduction of our new bottles of Still Spring Water. These bottles are made from 88% renewable raw materials. The bottles paper is made from trees that are responsibly harvested, renewable and contribute to lowered carbon emissions.

Sugarcane is used for the shoulder and caps which reduce our carbon emissions by utilising a resource that grows back.

As part of our commitment to support local charities, 10% of all sales of the bottles will be donated to the Galway Hospice in 2022.