“The best garbage is the garbage that doesn’t accumulate.” However, that’s easier said than done because trash tends to occur daily. A bag from the bakery, an egg carton or a plate that didn’t survive the fall onto the tiles. All the better if you have a strategy for dealing with it.
Our Green Pearls® partners have a lot of experience with upcycling and can give you a few tips on what to look out for. By the way, reuse or upcycling is not a new phenomenon – it already existed with our grandparents. The best example: the T-shirt or the bed linen that had a second life as a cleaning rag.
Tips from the SCHWARZWALD PANORAMA
Upcycling Ideen vom Schwarzwald Panorama
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Lost and found items that guests haven’t asked for back in the SCHWARZWALD PANORAMA end up in the GIVEBOX. It’s kind of an upgrade to the now-familiar book exchange closet at train stations or city parks. Employees can also put things in good condition there and take things as well. A swap-and-give principle as an alternative to disposal and/or consumer culture. By the way: In social media, there are also specific groups that follow the same principle and are called “Free your Stuff”.
The wax scraps in the SCHWARZWALD PANORAMA are collected for the SinnLicht candle manufacture in Karlsruhe. They cast new candles from recycled waxes. These will be sold again in the hotel store. And if you want to give it a try yourself: Melting down wax and making candles from it, is a great activity for an afternoon.
Egg cartons can also be put to good use, either as fireplace/grill lighters or as a growing station to plant seedlings in the spring. The SCHWARZWALD PANORAMA also has another use for coffee packaging: The gold/silver foil is great as confetti strips for New Year’s Eve decorations.
The employees of the Creativhotel Luise are also true masters in the art of upcycling. They even created an entire conference room as an upcycling project – from an old cupboard.
For Narnia fans, there is another special element in the massage room. To enhance the boring door a bit, there is a discarded cabinet in front of it. Thus, behind the cabinet is a real secret passage.
In the relaxation area in the spa of the Creativhotel Luise hang former shutters, which were refurbished and now serve as a special decoration.
The sandstone wall in the outdoor area was also an upcycling project. A Franconian orchard was created during the conversion, and discarded sandstones from a former railroad tunnel serve as walls for this purpose.
Speaking of remodeling, a lot of discarded building materials were produced, including structural steel mesh. These were used at the Creativhotel Luise to build an “arcade” in part of the outdoor area. The steel mats are to be used as climbing aids for plants and will be completely overgrown in the future
But upcycling can also be done with food. At Eco Park Hotel Azalea, for example, the cut-off edges of cakes are ground again to serve as “flour” for the next dessert.
Beautiful decorative elements are made from a simple dough in the childcare center as well as with cones and twigs, and the Christmas tree of the Italian hotel was made from a Euro pallet.
Of course, upcycling isn’t just for Europe: our hotels in Thailand also have some wonderful and clever ideas for saving waste. The Zeavola on Koh Phi Phi Island has some particularly nice ideas for you:
Melting candles with a tropical twist
Their candle stubs are melted down and then poured into coconut shells at the Zeavola to make new candles. Also, a beautiful and fiery decoration with coconuts: Empty coconuts left over from cocktails are filled with oil and used as torches for romantic candlelight dinners on the beach. Dug a hole in the beach, put the coconut in, and á voilà: A bright and beautiful light that’s also wind-protected and natural.
Thick tamarind branches that fall off due to wind and weather are great to make name tags out of. You have to cut them into slices and then dry them in the sun. The tamarind tree generally has very little resin and is therefore particularly well suited for this.
Big old bath towels are sewn into small towels by the hotel’s own seamstress. Then they are given again for single use in the public toilets, or as cold towels after meals to the guests.
Where some see food scraps, others see fertilizer. Thanks to the composter at Zeavola, food leftovers are turned into the finest fertilizer within 24 hours and distributed in the jungle garden.
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