What to look for in an eco-friendly hotel in Colombo

Almost every hotel in Colombo now talks about sustainability. A card in the bathroom about reusing towels is helpful, but on its own it does not make a hotel sustainable. Here are the questions we think are worth asking, and how we answer them ourselves.

Ask what the building used to be

This is one of the most important questions, yet it is rarely asked. A concrete frame contains a large amount of embodied carbon, and demolishing one to put up a more efficient building usually takes decades to pay back.

A hotel created inside an existing building has already made a bigger difference than a new building with solar panels. Colombo Court was created by converting old office buildings, and their original frames were kept. That is also why no two rooms here are the same shape.

Ask about water, not just electricity

Solar panels are easy to see and photograph. Water use is less visible, but in a tropical city it matters even more.

The questions worth asking are these. Is rainwater collected? Is grey water recycled for the garden, or does it go down the drain? Is drinking water filtered and bottled on site, or does the hotel buy tens of thousands of plastic bottles a year? The answer to that last question tells you a lot about a hotel’s approach.

Ask who certified it, and when

The word “eco-friendly” has no fixed meaning on its own. A certification means the hotel meets a recognised standard, and that the standard is applied again each year.

Ask for the name of the certification, the year it was first awarded, and whether it is still current. Colombo Court was the first city hotel in South Asia to be certified CarbonNeutral.

The awkward question

Here is a question we also ask ourselves. How much of it is offsetting?

No hotel in Colombo operates with zero emissions. Air conditioning is essential at thirty degrees, guests arrive by air, and kitchens use gas. Carbon neutral means that the remaining emissions are measured and then offset, and offsetting is not the same as not producing emissions.

That is why a responsible hotel keeps working to reduce its energy and water use every year, as well as offsetting what remains.

The small tells

Glass bottles rather than plastic. Reclaimed timber rather than new. Art made from local scrap metal rather than imported. LED lighting throughout the building, not only in the corridors. And a garden watered with recycled water that stays green in February.

Guests do not need to make any of these choices themselves, because they are built into the hotel. We have written about what our certification involves in more detail.