The Budapest HILTON separates and stores clear and coloured bottles in containers which rest behind the hotel under the historic Fisherman's Bastion.
The dumpsters seem unremarkable, if a bit out of place. In actuality, they are part of a project that could change the way Hungarian hotels do business. These are the Hilton's recycling containers, which every few weeks are emptied of their contents of paper and glass, and which will help save the hotel up to USD 10,000 this year from reduced waste output. Soon, if Attila Zobor, Resident Manager of the Budapest Hilton, has his way, hotels all over Hungary will recycle also. His success so far is evidence of two important facts: that energetic individuals can have an impact on the environment here in Central and Eastern Europe, and that environmental efforts can go hand-in-hand with business needs.
The Budapest HILTON separates and stores clear and coloured bottles in containers which rest behind the hotel under the historic Fisherman's Bastion.
"Projects like these demonstrate that individuals within the business community can have a positive impact on the environment," says Emil Dzuray, project officer of the REC's new business information service. "That's why it's important to bring attention to their efforts."
There are two main actors behind this project. One is Budapest Marriott General Manager Michael Keskin who first envisioned a Hungarian hotel recycling program. The other is Zobor who took charge later and developed the idea.
Keskin began only because he had to. "My motivation was my job description," he says. He was acting upon a series of environmental directives issued by the International Hotel Environmental Intiative, a program to which the Marriott and Hilton belong. But what he and Zobor have done goes beyond the call of duty.
They could have introduced the kind of half-hearted recycling project common in businesses where, full of enthusiasm, managers introduce initiatives only to forget about them a few months later. But instead they took a patient, step-by-step approach, and turned their ideas into lasting measures.
They could have given up when they realized how little recycling is done in this part of the world. Instead, they got their hotels on recycling programs and coordinated one for 10 other Budapest hotels too. Now, Zobor is organizing an environmental initiative for the entire Hotel Association of Hungary, coordinating recycling efforts in hotels across the country.
Recycling efforts and other environmental measures, like the use of this trash compactor, help a hotel save up to USD 10,000 per year.
Unfortunately, the collecting companies were not always reliable. While newspaper and white paper were easy to get rid of because other businesses were already recycling these, bottles proved more difficult to move.
Some companies that promised to collect never showed up, or did not show up on schedule. Other times there was no guarantee that bottles, which had been carefully separated according to color, would ever be recycled at all.
Says Keskin, "We had no idea what they were doing after they left." Others did not have enough or the right kind of trucks to collect the great volume of material the hotels had. The real problem, he says, is Central European. "We need somebody to use these recycled products," says Keskin. "There's no financial reward right now" for the collecting companies, he argues.
After a few false starts and many telephone calls, they found reliable bottle collectors who would pick up the glass without charge. (Now at the Hilton, a bottle collector, pays approximately one cent per kilogram of green bottles, and two cents per kilogram of clear bottles.)
Each hotel invested USD 10,000 for trash compactors for general refuse. This further reduced the volume of their general waste by 50%, making payments for disposal much lower.
Other measures at the hotels include giving guests the option of not having their towels washed daily, and providing comment cards for environmental suggestions. Zobor found a school that would collect the Hilton's old batteries.
"The project has very good merits," explains Zobor. "The country, the industry, Budapest, and the hotels need this. I saw that with some extra effort I could probably do it."
His efforts so far have included writing articles in local trade publications and handbooks. He entered the hotel association in an environmental competition held by the International Hotel Association, which earned the organization a "special commendation," an award the equivalent of second prize. He's organizing a series of seminars for hotel management on environmentalism in the hotel industry.
Most importantly, he organized the first coordinated hotel recycling effort in Budapest. This program will begin in January and will recycle paper from 12 hotels.
Perhaps the most commendable aspect of Zobor's efforts is that he worked voluntarily, with no financial assistance from the hotel association, the Hilton, or the Hungarian government.
Winston Bowman, Information Exchange Team Leader at the REC, has seen the project develop from the beginning. He adds, "It was Zobor's persistence and determination that won the day. A lot of people promised support but were nowhere to be seen when he really needed them."
Zobor says it will probably be months before the project is able to begin to extend itself into the Hungarian cities outside Budapest because regional managers have to be trained and collecting agencies need to be contracted.
"We could introduce many things all at once," he says, "but soon we'd find that the excitement would go and people would lose interest. We don't want to do that. We are in this for good, for the long run."