See detailed case studies on Sheraton Skyline Hotel near Heathrow, The Bingham Hotel in Richmond on Thames and Arcola Theatre in East London and the benefits they receive from joining Green Tourism for London.

The London Canal Museum at Kings Cross tells the story of London’s canals and the people who lived and worked on the waterways.

‘ As a museum of the canals we tend to start off with a ‘green tinge’. We have realised that our visitors, supporters, and venue hire clients expect us to be as green as the canals we tell them about. Although canals are little used as an environmentally friendly form of transport these days, they are an important haven for wildlife and their towpaths encourage those ultra-green ways of getting about, by cycle and by foot.
So it is this customer expectation, as well as our desire to reduce our impact on the environment, that is driving our programme to be a ‘green museum’.
We are already quite green. Nearly all the lighting in the museum is energy efficient. We go for water-saving designs when replacing taps. We do some recycling and we're planning to join our local authority's charity recycling scheme. It is not very green to throw out perfectly good equipment.
We have applied for the Green Tourism for London scheme because we want to benchmark our progress and have a clear target to aim for at the next level, as well as making sure that our customers can see an independent ‘badge’ that recognises what we have achieved so far.
I am convinced that, in the future, green will be the only acceptable colour for a social
business such as ours, and as always we want to be ahead of the game.’

Martin Sach, Chair, London Canal Museum

The Royal Lancaster is a 416 room 4-star hotel at Lancaster Gate, overlooking Hyde Park.

'We started getting more involved in green issues about 3 or 4 years ago largely because we wanted to reduce our landfill bills. Then some students on a work project developed an environmental action plan for us, involving all areas of the hotel and the staff, and we have not looked back since. We now recycle about 50% of guest waste and our next target is conference and banqueting. We have the third largest conference and banqueting suites in London so you can imagine just how much waste can be produced from functions alone.

Last year we applied for and won Considerate Hotelier of the Year award. We feel proud that our approach has succeeded in involving all staff of all personnel levels, which means it’s really integrated into the hotel operations.

We have applied for Green Tourism for London because we feel this will be the final independent validation for all the work that we have done so far and it will also act as encouragement to continue. And we will have an award that our customers recognize. This is becoming essential now; our environmental page on our website is the most visited page, which is fantastic. Nearly all our corporate clients and many of our other guests ask about our green policies and we know that this has been a deciding factor in us clinching business.'

Clare Wright, Purchasing Manager and Chair of the hotel's Green Committee