Environmental audit for the hospitality industry

Running head: ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT FOR HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY
Environmental management for the hospitality industry
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Introduction
The environmental audit is an environmental management tool for the purpose of
measuring activities that are against the standard set for the betterment of the environment. There
are different types of the environmental audit and depending on the purpose. Environmental
auditing must not be confused with the environmental impact analysis, although both are an
environmental management tool. Environmental audit (EA) is done when a particular
development is already in place. EA is used to assess and check the existing practices and the
environmental effects due to the activities that are currently done. Thus it is important to note
that EA provides a picture of the scenario that is currently happening in an organization at the
time of analysis (Barton and Bruder 2014). The benefits of EA are: to safeguard the natural
resources and the environment used in a project or plant; to verify and the check the international
and domestic law compliance (Cook, van Bommel and Turnhout 2016).
It is important to make audits in relation to the environment is due to the following
reasons: demonstrate the commitment of the company to the environmental protection to the
employees; identification of the potential areas of cost saving and waste minimization and the
other related activities; in order to address the current and the future problems that may arise due
to the negligence towards the environment; enable the companies to have good environmental
practices and highlight as well as address the deficiencies (Viegas et al. 2013).
Literature review
Practices in the restaurant industry- The practices that are performed by the restaurant
industry are related to the dimensions of green designs of space and building, sustainable food,
green materials, green purchasing, recycle and reuse programs, environmental health, pollution
prevention, water conservation, energy efficiency. Furthermore, the restaurants provide training
to the employees and adopt the environmental policies which are related to the green practices.

While the other forms of the green practices that are performed by the restaurants are the
providing food in a sustainable way and ensure that when the consumers take the food, they do
so by helping the environment (Chou, Chen and Wang 2012). The restaurant's manager of Italy
emphasize on the 5 most important environmental practices like reduction in the usage of the
products that are environmentally dangerous; energy saving practices; a collection of the solid
residues selectively; water saving practices, usage of the reprocessed paper napkin or cloth
napkin. For both the Turkish and the Italian restaurant managers, the four most important
practices are the reduction in the usage of the product that is dangerous for the environment,
selective collection of the solid waste, energy and water saving practices (Doğan, Nebioğlu and
Demirağ, 2015).
Energy management- usage of energy is vastly greater in a commercial kitchen in
comparison to the food-related activities. Consumption of the energy is highly variable due to the
wide variety of the appliances and the variations in the models. The refrigerated storages alone
consumes 41 percent of the energy used in the kitchen. The other hot holding appliances like the
bain maries and the heat lamps consume 16 percent of the energy and the third largest consumer
is the grills. Thus, poor levels of monitoring and maintenance have led to the excessive energy
usage in the refrigeration. Whereas, consolidation of the refrigerated storage and correct sizing
can lead to a reduction in the energy consumption. In the restaurant industry, the largest
consumer of energy in a particular restaurant is the kitchen. The energy consumption in the
coking of food along with the refrigeration of the food items is the largest consumer of energy
(Mudie et al. 2013).
Water consumption- tourism to a big extent depends on the water as it a resource which is
required to provide the basic services and as food and hygiene. The water usage in the hotels can
also be contributed to the usage of pools, lakes, winter sports and golf fields. Furthermore, water