Environmental impact
We have the responsibility to fundamentally change how we operate our business by ensuring we reduce our contribution to climate change. Our focus on decarbonising our hotel estate, one of the largest in the UK, has allowed us to become the hotel operator with the highest number of low‑carbon rooms in the UK – 1,500 by March 2025. By ‘low-carbon’ we mean that the hotels are powered by electricity backed by Renewable Energy Guarantees of Origin (REGO) and no gas is used for heating and cooking.
Net zero targets validated by SBTi
20% water reduction per sleeper by 2030
Reducing plastic wherever possible across our hotels, restaurants and associated supply chain
We’ve restated our target in 2024/25 to take an end-to-end approach to waste. Our new commitment will see us work closely with our waste partner to identify the items that are most material to Whitbread, and with suppliers to find solutions.
50% reduction in food waste by 2030
Our target is to reduce food waste by 50% by 2030 against a 2018/19 baseline. This helps us to become a more efficient business, but also reduces our GHG emissions and helps support food security, both in the UK and across our global supply chain.
We are also working hard to ensure that none of our general waste goes to landfill as we know that the environmental impact of landfill is a growing issue. We have a target to divert 100% of our operational waste from landfill and work with our supplier to meet this.
How we’re positively impacting the environment
Our new Swindon hotel was the first Premier Inn to be designed and built without a connection to a natural gas supply and is powered entirely by renewable electricity. It received the edie ‘Built environment project of the year’ award in November 2023.
The site is designed to BREEAM ‘Excellent’ standards and packed with innovative features, including energy-efficient air-to-water Mitsubishi Q-Ton CO2 heat pumps to heat water, low energy LED lighting with lighting controls and metering and solar panels installed on site. The hotel purchases only renewable electricity from the grid – in line with all of Whitbread’s owned and operated operations in the UK and Germany.
As part of our commitment to reducing our impact on the environment, reducing our gas consumption is crucial.
In 2019 we began rolling out the award‐winning Synergy chargrill to over 200 restaurants including all Beefeater and Cookhouse & Pub sites. The Synergy Grill has led to gas savings of over 20% in the impacted sites and a 10% reduction of the total gas consumption of the entire restaurant business.
Not only this, but the new grill also improves the quality of cooking, enables faster cleaning, and reduces cooking oil and waste. Therefore, through our innovations we can not only improve our carbon footprint but also delight our guests with even better tasting food and support our operations teams become more efficient.
To achieve our target of reducing water consumption by 20% per sleeper by 2030, we partner with water wholesalers to implement water efficiency interventions in our hotels and restaurants in their geographical regions. This allows us to collaboratively implement water saving technology at scale whilst monitoring and measuring the interventions to bring water consumption reduction and cost savings to Whitbread. This approach also means we target water reduction interventions in the areas that need it the most.
In the spring of 2023, we worked with South West Water (SWW) to trial water-efficient technologies including airgap toilet valves and more water-efficient taps and shower heads. The project aimed to create water savings for Whitbread, SWW and the region in general. An audit of the interventions revealed a positive overall impact with a 15.3% reduction in water use per sleeper recorded at the relevant Whitbread sites, demonstrating significant water savings for both Whitbread and SWW.
