Kimberly-Clark Professional puts hygiene high on agenda at Green Tourism Conference

This follows the announcement last year of the company’s partnership with the Green Tourism Business Scheme (‘Green Tourism’) to promote the sustainable procurement of hygiene products in the tourism industry. 

Green Tourism is the UK’s national sustainable tourism certification scheme. The Green Tourism Conference, in its second year, brings together its members who include hotels, restaurants, travel companies and operators of leisure attractions. Membership is awarded to organisations that have met rigorous criteria covering a range of areas such as energy and water consumption, social projects and diversity. 

One of the many methods of achieving membership is through the use of products that provide sustainability benefits and as such are officially endorsed by Green Tourism. In 2013 a number of Kimberly-Clark Professional products were given such approval by Green Tourism and the company played a key role at last year’s conference. 

"This year, as a global leader in hygiene, we will be bringing hard facts and insights to the conference about how to build a sustainably clean leisure business to maximise growth and minimize risk,” says Kimberly-Clark Professional’s national account manager Lindsay Bruce. 

"Our sustainability vision at Kimberly-Clark Professional is to create a better world through products and solutions that help our customers grow,” Bruce adds. "For the lodging and leisure industry growth is very much dependant on achieving hygiene and quality standards. We know from working with our customers in this area that one of the biggest fears is an outbreak of infection and disease, which can ruin a business or set it back years.

At the conference the company will be running workshops on ‘low impact housekeeping’ with all delegates. The Kimberly-Clark Professional team will demonstrate tools and techniques that enable a business to minimise impact on the environment, decrease costs and reduce business risks though high hygiene standards. 

"Our workshops will hopefully be fun and engaging,” adds Guillaume Brunet, sustainability manager, Kimberly-Clark Professional EMEA, who will be part of the team leading the workshop. "We will give delegates helpful tips on how to be a sustainably clean business and explain the Green Tourism Scorecard. This is an aid for members to take away and weigh up their procurement needs, and assess if they are using and choosing the right hygiene consumables for washrooms, guest rooms, customer facing and back-of-house areas.

"Delegates want to know about running even more successful sustainable businesses. Therefore, we hope our insights will be provocative and influential about what hygiene means for both guests and staff. We believe that if businesses create an exceptional guest experience and take the utmost care for the wellbeing of their patrons during their stay, keeping guests safe from infection, then they will attract and retain custom which will ultimately lead to sustainable business growth,” Brunet concludes. 

Kimberly-Clark Professional is proud to be chosen by Green Tourism as ‘Preferred Supplier’. Through the Green Tourism Grading Programme, its products can give leisure businesses the confidence to achieve their green requirements. Products from Kimberly-Clark Professional endorsed by Green Tourism include Kleenex Hand Towels and Luxury Foam Cleansers, Scott Hand Towels and Toilet Tissue, Kleenex and Scott Facial Tissues, Wypall Wipers and Microfibre Cloths, and Andrex Toilet Tissue.

The products are developed to be sustainable in production and use. Paper products are made from a variety of fibre sources, and virgin fibre is FSC certified from responsibly managed forests. Materials such as newspapers and magazines are recycled by Kimberly-Clark to produce Wypall centre feed rolls, Scott and Kleenex toilet tissue. The Kleenex Luxury foam soap requires less water to rinse helping to reduce water costs and energy, and less formula goes down the drain. 

Andrea Nicholas, director of Green Tourism, added: "We are delighted that Kimberly-Clark Professional has agreed to be a conference sponsor and will be bringing its knowledge and insights on hygiene best practice to the conference. Green Tourism is the biggest sustainable tourism accreditation programme in the world with thousands of members in the UK and an influence that stretches from central Europe and Scandinavia to Canada and New Zealand. Building on the success of last year’s event this conference is an ideal opportunity for like-minded people to share good practice, be inspired and motivated and to gain knowledge about green products and suppliers that can help them reduce the environmental impact of their business.”

For more information or to register for the Green Tourism Conference go to http://www.green-tourism.com/go-green/events/gtc2014/