Hello everybody. My name is Prasanna Raghavan and I’m the head of finance and sustainability for Ascott, India. Ascott is a part of Capitaland and we are the hospitality or the lodging vertical of Capitaland. We are headquartered out of Singapore. And we have multiple properties and services and hotels. So basically we are in the business of hospitality.

So what I’m going to share with you over the next 10 to 15 minutes is what I think of our sustainability, what we have done as a group and sustainability and what we plan to do, the importance of sustainability. So these are my thoughts and these do not represent necessarily the thoughts of the organization. So this is purely my thoughts what I feel on sustainability.

So before we jump into the topic, what is sustainability? I mean, I’ve gone through multiple dictionary definitions of sustainability, but this is something which I thought is most apt. Sustainability or sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the current generation without compromising the future generations or the ability of future generations to exist. So look at the last word exist.

So sustainability or sustainable development is something that is very important to the current generation because if we don’t do this then the future generations cannot exist. So that’s where we have come to today.

So I did some research and found out when did sustainability or sustainable development started. You would be surprised. It started as early as 1992. This was first discussed in the United Nations conference which was held in Rio di Janeiro in 1992. So this has been around for the last, from 1999 to 2024 you can you can imagine how many years this has been around? But nobody really talked about it or thought about it in any industry, be it Hospitality or otherwise. Till 2015 when the first Paris conference. So what they call cop 21 was held. And there were 196 participating countries where they assigned for climate change, and something that should be done by these 196 participating countries to ensure the climate change, and the increase in temperature does not happen and this was signed so that this could be implemented by 2030.

So in Hospitality generally hospitality is considered an industry which is unsustainable. And this is always been the case, whereas from 2015 onward almost for about 10 years now sustainability has been talked about in in large forums. There have been multiple conferences, which has been held on it. There have been multiple players who have come into the field of sustainability or susty as it is called. So people really woken up today and I think we’ve come to a stage in any industry and being in Hospitality for the last 25 years. I can speak for this industry and this has become very pertinent and something which you cannot ignore today. Of course, there are certain old schools of thought which still feel that I mean, it’s not gonna happen in my generation. So why the hell should I bother. But I think it’s it’s important for all of us as Leaders to ensure that this is given the due importance. Sustainability is implemented in any any hotel or hospitality company in ways and means it can. It has already been done and continues to be you know done in the coming years.

So let me talk a few small things on on what are the three pillars of sustainability. The three pillars of sustainability are environment, social and economic.So sometimes they call it ESG which is environment social and governance. So there are three pillars to sustainability, something that you do to save the environment something that you do which is more social cause and something that you do from an economic perspective or from a governance perspective, which means that you need to kind of report what you’ve done sustainability in your annual reports, which is soon becoming a reality for most of the companies. It’s already there for listed companies. I’m sure it would be good if all the companies are, you know bound to report it. That would make it more important and more pertinent for them to implement it.

So we at Ascott we call it the Ascott cares program which is basically Community alliance respect environment and supply chain. I think it’s self-explanatory what each of these pillars or each of these five care stands for. So what we do to the community, what we do to society, what we do to the environment and what we do on a supply chain perspective. So with this I’m going to just share with you what our hotels have done in the last couple of years in the field of sustainability and what we plan to do in the coming years. Some of it you might have already heard or you might have already implemented across your hotels. If some of them have not been implemented I urge you to ensure that you implement it as soon as possible.

So we want to talk about it in a couple of minutes, but sustainability does not stop with your work. I feel I’m kind of a cheerleader for any sustainability effort is which is taken from a personal perspective also. So personal and professional, I think they go hand in hand and sustainability can only reach where it can if it is implemented throughout. I mean meaning to say that you don’t come out of your office at six o’clock and forget about sustainability. Whatever you can do in your little way at home. Amongst your colleagues amongst your family in terms of sustainability is something that’s going to be important for this entire Society meaning to say is a 24 by 7. And for me systematically comes from the bottom of my heart, which means basically that I don’t stop sustainability at six o’clock and then forget about it. It’s in me 24 by 7. So some of the steps which I take is like for example, if we do something in our company and I try and see whether I can duplicate it amongst the hotel GMS if I can, you know, kind of pass it on to them pass on the suppliers to them and ensure that those can be also replicated to that. That’s more from a personal perspective. I mean nobody in my company is telling me please go and do this.

But because of my passion towards sustainability, these are things which I do. I have a you know, WhatsApp group among people are among the finance colleagues where I can go and share my ideas. I encourage them to share their ideas, which can be implemented across in my company also.

So what are some of the things which we did in 2023 towards sustainability?

So one was in this space of energy. Some of them have been in the space of finance administration, front office, each of the departments. We’ve done something in small ways. But some things that come very very important which is which is having a large impact on sustainability something like wind power. So we’ve been on wind power. Across our properties 86% of our wind or our requirements for energy or power has been garnered from wind energy. Being in Tamil Nadu, we have assigned a group captive scheme agreement and we’ve been doing it. I mean, it’s so funny. We’ve been doing it for almost 12 years now, but nobody talked about it for until about five years back. So 86% of our power requirements across our properties are from wind power and the endeavors to make it 100% in 2024.
So as you must be aware, we use about 500,000 units of wind power across our two properties. So 86% of it is from wind power and not the government supplied power. So what does it mean? I mean, where do you get this power from? So we get this power from wind turbines, which we don’t own. They are down south and they have something called group captive scheme in which you can enter into a long-term power purchase agreement from wind suppliers. And this comes through the grid and it gets adjusted in your you know, the government bill that is given to you on a monthly basis. So that’s a large large-scale sustainable effort, which we’ve taken.

The next one is in the space of again electricity. We have set up EV charging stations in our properties. I’m sure a lot of your properties were also have. So these don’t cost money because these are set up free of costs by companies. And then you enter into a revenue share model with them wherein each unit of power which is generated or used by your customers people who visit your properties are shared between you and Person or the company which is supplying this EV charging station. So it’s a zero cost kind of zero investment kind of a sustainable.

Now, what’s the third one? So we’ve in 2024 looking to go into one of our hotel cars and make them EV car. So all hotels, all of your hotels would have cars obviously so you can maybe make if one of your cars going old you can kind of let go of it and then change them into an EV car. Yes. It is a bit of a large capex investment, but this is again something which is going or giving it back to the environment.

Then what are the next next ones occupancy sensors in your corridors in your rooms? You can put in LED lights in your corridors. Again, I mean, these are very small ones. It might seem that you know, I mean, it’s just a occupancy sensor. Why should I do that? So if you see again, every unit of power saved through any of these efforts or something, which you’re giving it back. So look at it from the perspective of what if I did not do it and push or fast forward about 30 years back. Earth will not exist.

So look at it from that perspective or not necessary always from it gonna cost money.
Yes, it’s going to cost money. But you’re it’s going to give you back much more not to your generation and also for your generations to come. So let’s let’s have that larger thought in mind and always not look at sustainability be from a cost perspective. Yes. Some of them are a bit expensive to put by but the the impact that it gives back to you in your generation and also to the generations to come I think that is the larger perspective from which sustainability is to be approached.

Because I’ve spoken to a lot of lot of forums to a lot of my colleagues who always say that why should I do it? I mean it’s gonna cost money and I always tell them please do not look at sustainability always from the cos factor. It’s it is not necessarily always going to you know have an impact. They always say my GOP is gonna go down by two three percent.

Yes, it is.

Some of them are expensive. Some of them are capex investments. Some of them are opex changes. But if that one or two percent, you can contribute this is what you’re giving it back to the world. So look at it from that perspective. And and I think that’s that’s the right approach you should be taking to sustaining.

So some of the other efforts which we have taken are, we’ve shifted to Wooden Key Cards and in 2024. I mean we had plastic key card, so wooden key cards again made from bamboo thats sustainable. So we have let go of plastic key cards and moved to wooden key cards and the coming year our endeavor is to move to digital locks and even bring the wooden key card usage down.

So then we thought I mean what are the other things? What are the other areas which you can look at? We always talking about our we talk about, you know, the front office key cards, so we thought that the guest rooms we are using plastic. We’re using single-use plastic bottles. So we took a two-step approach on this. The first step was actually to change all the single used bottle into 20 liter bubble tops, and we did not just go blindly and and just purchase bubble tops of the market. We went with the company called Book Water,which is a again a startup which is based out of Chennai. The beauty of it is that it is still a 20 liter bottle or 20 liter bubble top, but the plastic that is used in it is not those micro Plastics which are used by other brands.But each of these 20 liter bubble tops come with the kind of a QR probes scanner, which tells you the quality of water, you know, the various parameters of water that are there in that and each of these cans are used only 30 times. So if you really if you have a scanner you can scan it. It’ll show how many more times does that plastic bubble top have to reuse and every can of theirs tells you the quality of water that is you know being stored in. So after 30 uses, these cans are sent to Tirupur down south where they are mixed with yarn to make t-shirts. So unlike certain brands which might be using the bubble top for 200 times 300 times. You have no clue how many times it is used. This particular brand has a concept where it is used only for 30 uses and after that it is retired. They call it retired and then they send it back to the Yarns centers into convert them into t-shirts. So we did a novel thing we kind of use the cans implemented these cans and gave these t-shirts to our long stay guests, you know to show what what we are as a company doing in the field of sustainability and this was actually received quite well by all our clients.

Then again in the space of water we said okay, we will do this now, but we’ll go one step further and we are trying to install a glass bottling plant in 2024 by when by which all our water that is supplied to our guests will be in glass box. So which means we have even going to get go away with these 20 liter bubble top cans and have both our restaurants as well as our rooms. The supply is going to be from glass bottling plants. I know some of leading brands in India have already, you know shifted to glass bottle, So by either buying it from outside or having their own glass bottle in plans, so we’re planning to put in our own glass bottling plants and do something in again in space of water.

So this is water and then we found a company in 2022, which we implemented through 2023. It is called Vayu Jal. It is an IIT based company and Vayu jal means in simple terms Vayu is air jal is water? So what does this company do? They basically convert the humidity in the air to water? So they have it’s IIT developed in-house Made in India technology where in water from the air is used in their machines to convert it into Water through a UV processed. So we have put in some of their plants in or some of them machines as they call it in our properties wherein in the guest Lobby we have put these machines and it’s it’s got a Vayu Jal kind of so it was kind of an innovative very innovative thing. And even we won an innovation award forthis one of our properties. So these have been installed across a lot of companies who are not in the field of hospitality, but of course for use of this water to their staff, so we put this machines in our staff cafeteria, in our guest Lobby in our banquet rooms. So when people come it’s more more I mean, so but the wow factor in it because they’re not seen something like that and considering that it comes from IIT. And so Made in India kind of an initiative we found that this is again one thing which we could do in the space of water.
So this is something which I’m even recommending to some of my Hospitality colleagues to kind of have a look at them and very happy to say that as a company, We’re even trying to promote this this again a startup company. So we see most of these companies in sustainability are you start ups. To say so really they request support from groups like us to kind of promote them because they are nowhere available in the radar. Because they don’t have large marketing budgets or advertisement budget. So you kind of are whenever I am able to see them in any of the forums. I kind of pick them up and see whether they can be used for us.

And this is where I I feel is very important for all of us as Leaders to kind of promote them. To kind of support them and also, you know pass on to them to the industry colleagues wherever it can be used. I’m very happy to say that one of our properties in Philippines is even looking to import these machines and see whether they can be used across the property.

So Vayu Jal is an initiative this which we took. So the other one is I told about the EV charging station. We talked about the EV car. And in the space of administration or Finance, I mean, I feel I felt that even in finance being a finance person for a over 25 years now, we can bring in some sustainability. So what did we do in that space?

So we went in from you know, signing the bank documents or bank checks or whatever work to concept called EM signer which is used by our Bankers. So this is basically a digital signature, and it can be, basically need to log in and use this em sign now, it’s called emudras company that supports it and you so we’ve done away with sending, you know signed or scanned papers to the bank. So we use em signer across please. And then we shifted to something called recycled paper. So again, this is not a single used paper. In the sense it is not a single side paper. This paper is made using recycled material recycled paper. It looks a bit brown in color compared to your normal paper, which is white. So when I dug deep and found out how does brown become white actually, it goes through a chemical process to make the paper white. So again a chemical process means that you’re going to harm the environment and use lot of water to kind of make this chemical process or this the white paper. So this paper though recycled paper is a FSE certified. And we’ve been using it for over a year now in our properties. A lot of resistance I should say in the beginning from people or this paper looks dirty. This paper does not print properly. I mean you’ll have the works coming across in case you want to develop or you want to change something so that that change process is something which your sustainability leader in your organization should really be pushing for because if you want to sit back and just say implement it it’s not going to happen. I’ve been doing this for about 18 months now and I mean believe me you you’ve got really push certain things for it to get implemented across the group. Now just implementing and saying “Hey buy recycled paper” to you procurement team its not going to happen. So you can forget about it.

So you I basically had to literally take the job of a procurement officer, speak to the vendor, Ask them for samples print it. Somebody told me the print there’s a problem with the print. It doesn’t properly then we found where they’re actually the problem with the printer not the paper. So we’ve kind of done away with white paper. So we use recycled paper. I think it’s very important here because recycled paper, every so, when I went back to the manufacturer and said, I mean what okay. It’s recycled paper. It’s good to have kinds but then I found that 16 reams of this paper saves one tree and thousands of liters of water. So the tagline is which I think would be very useful for hotels to adopt, Is 16 reams saves a tree. So again, we are very proud to say that between just two properties in Chennai because those are numbers which have with me based out of Chennai. I have these numbers with me being able to save 20 trees in 2023. By shifting over to this recycled paper. So this again is a sustainable. This one is quite simple. You just have to ask your procurement leader to speak to the vendor get quotes and do away with the normal copier paper and this paper this paper again is not expensive comparative. So there’s not going to be any cost impact on your p&l because of the shift.

And then we also shifted to from single use guest toiletries to bamboo guest utilities. Some of the other things which we did was also do away with I think this most of the hotels would have done do away with single use soap and shampoo of bottles which come in these 30 ml small plastic bottles. So we put these soaps and shampoos on the wall the wall mounted once. I think a lot of hotels I think already done it. If not my urge I urge you to please do it ASAP. This is available from multiple companies so you can choose your the brand which you want and go go forward with that.

So these are some of the things which I thought we should I should be sharing. So in this if you see I told that I I have a personal fire burning in me on sustainability. So things like Bamboos toothbrush. These are things which are purchased for my house or even from a from a personal perspective. We’ve done away with your normal plastic toothbrushes and moved over to Bamboo. These are again things which you can replicate in your house and also in your community.

So we’ll also talk a little bit on the sustainability certificates that are available. There are multiple certifying organizations which certify you as a sustainable Hotel. Some of it you might be already knowing it’s called igbc International green body certification or Green Building certification. There are something called net Edge certification which is given and then there’s Edge Advanced. So we as a company have decided to go for a certification called GSTC which is the global sustainable tourism certificate. So few of our properties in India have already got it and the endeavor is that that by 2024 all of us get on to the certification. It’s it’s a process certification which means that you need to call in for a process audit and then they give the certificate to you that are the various parameters, which we need to adopt and then this is certified on a annual basis so that you don’t stop and then stop something.

So these we’ve talked about on certifications. So we also talk a little bit on what we as a company want to go in 2024. Glass bottling plant is something which we’ve already spoken about then we’ve also spoke about the certifications.

So we are actually currently doing some work on our AHU . We’re doing an AHU retrofit across all our machines be it in the guest Lobby or anywhere across the hotel. So we’ve taken one property as a sample to do it first. And then again, we’ll be replicating it. It is again done by a Bombay based company. They have also worked with banks and other non hospitality companies so ours will be the first hospitality company they’ll be working with. So this retrofit will be installed in the AHU and they promise about 30% reduction in the power consumption. So we’ve kind of we actually just in the process of doing one sample ahu and then replicating it. So the ROI on this with something about two years, but I think it’s really worth the try.

And just about a week back. I think the first week of February. So a lot of companies must be doing a lot of CSR activities. So we said why not combine CSR and also bring in sustainability part of it. So we went forward with that. So we have actually going to do our CSR activity through one of our CSR agencies in Chennai. And for 23 institutions, 23 schools across Chennai, we are going to supply clean drinking water. Now you will ask what is sustainability and clean drinking water got to do with each other. So there’s a company based in Chennai. And unlike an RO plant, which kind of there’s about 30% water wastage.
So this company used a specialized filter, which is put into the the water purification unit. Comes in various sizes starting from 50 liters to 2,500 liters and there is no water wastage and this water filters or water candles need not be replaced for about 10 years and none of the water that goes through it is wasted. So we did a small water test to find out what they’re saying is really true and we did find that it is potable water that really comes out of it. So you can pour your normal water and then when it comes out, it’s it becomes portable water. So there is no water wastage. And also again, this is a Made in India effort so that we proud to partner with them and you know have this installed. So we going forward we will be working with them for other installations in other areas through our CSR wing.

so I think these are things which we have covered and of course the last one being that we’re looking to do some work on our STP plant through the same company. They have a non AMC based non-chemical based STP plant or STP plant which they supply. So even they can do work on your current STP plants and ensure that the AMC cost is cut as well as the chemical usage in them is reduced.

So these are our plans for 2024. I always keep looking around to see, you know, there’s something else which can be done in some area some other area, which can be taken up. And as I said, these are things which are available around you you just have to take the extra bit of effort. To kind of hear, to see to spend some time away from your work. I mean if you have your if you have sustainability leaders in your organization, I please urge them to spend at least an hour a day to look around. I mean, these are things which are already there. I mean we never just that we don’t know about it because I think we don’t really take that extra bit of an hour. Okay, let’s spend one hour a day or one hour a week. Have these things installed, call the vendors, do this sampling convince your your managers to kind of put in that extra bit of an effort and do this. I am sure most of these what I have spoken about some of this you must have already done. If you have not done it, please I urge to do it. And as I told you if you do something and find it to be useful, find it to be an advantage don’t keep it to yourself spread the message around so that others can also benefited because you must have seen climate change is happening, 1.5 degree temperature increases is happening. And you can see floods all around you you can see, you know, the climate change things are not. You know not really going how well as it was about five years back. so climate change is there to stay.
Let’s put in all our efforts Into making this world a better place to live and with that I would like to say, thank you and all the best in your sustainability journey. Bye.