Prestigious Green Apple Awards Ceremony:
Heritance Hotels bring pride, honour winning double gold
Green Apple Awards Ceremony
* Heritance Hotel, Heritance Kandamala bag
two golds
* Awards ceremony was launched in 1994 by Green Organization
* Awards were based on environment performance
* 17th prestigious annual event
Heritance Hotels of Aitken Spence brings honour and pride to Sri
Lanka, winning double gold at the Prestigious Green Apple Awards on
Environment Sustainability
Aitken Spence Hotels bagged two awards at the recently held
International Green Apple Awards for the Built Environment and
Architectural Heritage 2011. The Heritance Hotels beat many
organisations from around the world to walk away with the awards. The
Gold Award for Architectural Heritage in the Private Sector
International category went to Heritance Tea Factory. Heritance
Kandalama won the Gold Award for Built Environment.
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The
Heritance Tea Factory |
Speaking on the win, Managing Director of Aitken Spence Hotels Malin
Hapugoda, said “The Green Apple awards were a global endorsement of both
the environmental and the architectural commitment of Heritance Hotels.
The Heritance brand is synonymous with unique architecture and living
traditions. It is encouraging that our efforts have been recognized
internationally once again. We are also proud and honoured that we were
able to bring recognition to Sri Lanka by winning these awards.”
Heritance Hotels are renowned world over with distinctive and one of
a kind architecture that is in sync with its natural surroundings. The
brand places great importance on focusing on luxury that can be
sustained, with minimum impact on the environment and communities in
which they operate in. As the name suggests, Heritance Tea Factory was
once an abandoned tea factory that has now been restored and transformed
into a luxury hotel. Heritance Kandalama is a resort that has a strong
green focus and strives to continually improve on their environmental
best practices, leading the market in green innovation. In keeping with
the theme of sustainable luxury, all Heritance brand hotels place great
emphasis on contributing to the improvement of both the natural
environment and the communities they work in.
Launched in the year 1994 by The Green Organisation, the awards have,
over the last 17 years, evolved into both a prestigious annual event and
one of the major award schemes recognising and rewarding environmental
endeavour around the world. The competition is open to organisations
such as companies, communities and councils committed to improving
sustainability and making a positive impact on the environment.
The awards were based on environmental performance, encouraging the
efficient use of resources, enhancing the competitiveness of
organisations, supporting wider goals of sustainable development
including social benefits through community and staff involvement of the
organisations.
The comprehensive and multi-faceted judging criteria looked at
components of the entries such as environmental benefits, social
benefits such as the value to the community, financial benefits such as
cost saving and improving the bottom line.
The awards also focussed on visual and aesthetic impact, energy
efficiency, waste reduction, recycling or using recycled materials.
Great emphasis is placed on architectural heritage, on how structures
preserve the best of the past and design in character with existing
buildings, how traditional crafts and skills and other specialist work
are incorporated into the buildings, how environment disruption has been
minimised, innovation and last but not least, transferability of the
project of how others can benefit by adopting techniques used in the
project.
The awards were presented at a ceremony held on June 20, 2011 at the
University of Westminster, London.
Heritance Tea Factory and Heritance Kandalama will also be provided
with the opportunity to have their award winning paper published in The
Green Book, the world’s only annual work of reference on environmental
best practice which is distributed globally to environmental
professionals, reference libraries, universities, embassies and the
media. Furthermore, this year The Green Book will be distributed
throughout Houses of Parliament in the UK, as an insert in The House
magazine, further spreading the stories of the unique and
environmentally friendly Heritance Hotels.
With Sri Lanka gaining more and more attention and recognition
globally, this win will no doubt further strengthen Sri Lanka’s
reputation as a destination of choice for the discerning traveller.
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