Garden in a bathtub

Sustainability is defined as the ability to be sustained, supported, upheld, or confirmed. In EVS it is spoken as the quality of not being harmful to the environment or depleting natural resources, and thereby supporting long-term ecological balance. It happens to be the  buzzword in recent times. I was at an international summit of hospitality professionals and almost all speakers had a segment of their presentation dedicated to sustainability. It is certainly the wake-up time for each one of us, the time to pull up our socks' and gear up. Otherwise we'll only be left with a great deal of our flora and fauna extinct. We may have nothing worthwhile to give to our children. We have abused nature so much! Nature and its resources are an inheritance that need to be passed on to our future generations, we are mere guardians of this wealth We sadly haven't understood that fundamental principle yet. With advent of technology and modern living we are going miles away from our roots and we go after rampant destruction. We know the carbon footprints and all that jazz but what are we doing in reality?

I was at one of our hotels The Park New Delhi on a work assignment, been with the company for 10 years now and my job involves a bit of travelling too on training or recruitment assignments for my organisation. I also get to use the holiday plan of the company, where I can stay in any of our properties. Why I say this is, how could I have not made it to this fabulous hotel yet? Glad that it finally happened! I had gone there as a trainer but I gained much more, I bring with me some great learnings, valuable information as well as some extraordinary moments and memories to cherish. If I list them, they might go into a couple of posts, here I shall only speak about sustainability - the buzz word, as I call it.   

In fact I have appreciation for almost everyone at the hotel, I am more of a critique all thanks to my background in the rooms division. Having spent nearly 20 years does that to you I guess!

I found the hotel to have great energy. The hotel staff was very professional and living up to our brand promise Anything But ordinary. Special mention to the Housekeeping team, their Director Mrs. Vaneeta Arora, was such a great source of information and knowledge for me.

I used the heart of the house areas (back of the house areas, where guests do not go) most of the times, going from my room to the training classroom.  The areas were maintained so well, they were more like art galleries than fire exits. Beautiful picture messages and timely reminders everywhere including the staff cafeteria.I believe reinforcements  and ready reminders drive home messages much clearer and louder. This hotel was doing it, I was certainly delighted. Let me not go gaga over other things now and get straight to the point. The garden concept used by housekeeping, making use of the bathtubs was one of the best I have seen. What thought, concept and use of the need of the hour... that's sustainability!

The hotel renovated some rooms and got the bathtubs removed, again a step in the right direction. What would have happened to the discarded bathtubs? They would have reached the junk yard and remained there for ages creating waste that wouldn't decompose. Adding to the filth that already exists in such places. Instead Mrs. Arora came up with a great idea that was three pronged, one remove the bath tubs and help hotel save water, the cleaning time, cleaning agents etc. Two, not add to the pile of un decomposed junk and three; create beauty and life by using the old bath tubs as pots for planting different vegetables. 

This was happening outside the training classroom so it caught my attention. I saw the bathtubs being painted in bright lively colours one day, the next day mud and manure being added and the third day saplings planted. I literally saw a life coming into being and beauty created in junk. Isn't this also a great tribute to Swachh Bharat Mission. The beauty is, vegetables are grown in these bathtub nursery and they are used in cooking as well, straight fresh from the farm. This creates awareness and promotes growing and use of organic vegetables. The plants display small placards with their information and nutritive facts. The staff get to see some exotic vegetables and herbs and the chefs use them in their kitchens.

It always takes one ordinary idea to create stuff that's extraordinary! It was one of my ABO, Anything But Ordinary moments as we call at the Park Hotels. 

Hope you like the idea and it inspires you to think out of the box and your churn out a storm of ideas out of the tub yourself!