Water in Hotel Certification – only a first step towards the sustainable development of water governance in islands

With IWRA’s (International Water Resources Association) first Islands’ Water Congress happening in the Faroe Islands early in September 2024, we seize the opportunity to raise more awareness for water and encourage it’s protection and savings in the Faroe Islands (and on Islands anywhere else for that matter).

With a series of water-related stories we hope to inspire our audiences to look deeper and to better understand the bigger picture of the importance of water as a key resource, and to secure future water supplies together.

The Faroe Islands are not suffering from a lack of water, as much is clear. In fact, water is the least of environmental challenges you would think about when living in the Faroe Islands. But it is not always a lack of water, that is the problem.

Water can be also way too much, or it is increasingly polluted – particularly the chemical substances released into water with all the washing, cleaning, fertilizing, painting, coating etc. have become a real threat to human and to planetary health.

On top, there are many challenges to overcome in remote islands that might be not relevant for communities on mainlands and/or are particularly relevant to the fragile ecosystem and the location.

The Faroe Islands have several hotels and a main conference venue which are green-key certified. Those who are not, have their own standards for sustainability which either come from the hotel chain headquarter (as in Hilton) or have been developed by the team with particularly high ambitions. The hotels – and the meetings industry – do their part to become better in their governance of precious resources. In a talk with Gudrid Hovgaard, the Green Key Ambassador of Brandan Hotel, I try to find out where the key challenges lie for hotels and where improvements are needed for WATER on a larger scale, where hotels cannot comply by themselves.

The Brandan Hotel was the first hotel in the Faroe Islands with a Green Key certification – it was opened 4 years ago, during the pandemic, which led to some delay in the certification process. It is a good reference to evaluate the development post-certification.

In order to control generic water use and damages in the water system, a water meter is a basic need. It is also the precondition to collect data about water use to plan and make predictions. In the Faroe Islands there are no water meters – water is free there. How then to motivate staff and guests to save water? Which is not scarce and it is not expensive. However, the climate crisis is too real and weather patterns are also changing in the Faroe Islands. There are periods with low precipitation in summer and with all the drinking water being surface water, it is prone to pollution.

Water that is released without control in the soil through leakage or broken pipes is hurting the water circle and must be avoided. People who do not care or think about water will waste water wherever they go, so it is also a matter of responsibility. Water in the Faroe Islands is known for its purity and fresh taste, it should stay like that. There are many reasons to always care for water, even when there is enough at the moment.

We have sophisticated technology to measure water in real-time with digital devices for better control and leakage discovery. However, if there are no water meters, there are no ways to measure water use, to control and avoid wasting water. You can start from the other side – that is to limit water flow in showers and fittings, which is done by hotels when green-key certified. But you won’t recognise if the pipes have a problem or vessels have a leak. If it is not visible and obvious, it can’t be detected.

Another question is how to go about plastic bottles for water. The logistics for the handling of empty glass bottles in islands obviously can be so challenging that plastic bottles – which are recycled, but still have to end somewhere somewhat – seem the easier and cheaper solution. It is difficult for hotel teams to convince management of better and more sustainable solutions, if these are overly complicated and need more resources than the simplest ways. Is it then better to use a local water bottling company that offers only plastic packaging or to bring water in glass bottles from far away? Share your views, please? I think it is an interesting question….

In general, to use local companies and local products in hotels is a noble and certainly sustainable principle, but there is a discrepancy between supply and demand in small islands. Brandan is part of Smyril group and they are a big company, with several hotels, restaurants and ferry operations. When they decide for more sustainability, but the supply in the islands is too small to comply – what to do? Brandan uses a local supplier for ECA water for a test run since a few months. ECA water is a nature-based solution for cleaning. It is based on electrolyse and – as the housekeeping in the Brandan states – it is absolutely awesome and visibly cleans better than any sanitizer…. But the producer is a small company and it is not (yet) easy to provide the supply that is necessary.

Wastewater then must be treated in public facilities to dispose sufficiently clean water back into the ecosystem. Many hotels do their own water recycling, but with enough water around as in the Faroe Islands, why would a hotel here be motivated to look after their own circular water treatment and re-use? There simply is no need for using recycled water, e g for irrigation – as in arid areas of the world.

There are many questions that need to be discussed and solved when it comes to a water governance matching the needs in small islands, that is in accordance with international environmental standards. Water from source to sea does not stop at remote islands nor does it spare them. It happily spreads everywhere. Governance, industry, research need to work hand in hand to encourage and ensure engagement for more sustainability.

SDG6 for Water and Sanitation is directly affecting many of the other SDGs. It is helpful as an anchor to understand interaction between complex systems in a better way.

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If you organise conferences/events in a context of medical, research, energy, tunneling, water/ocean, sports or art, it will be a good idea to bring them to the Faroe Islands. The meeting ambassadors and Visit Faroe Islands Meetings will be happy to support.

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More stories and talks with influential and innovative people from the Faroe Islands, case studies and updates you find on the LinkedIn Showcase of Visit Faroe Islands Meetings: