Reducing our Carbon Foot Print

Here at the Riverside Park Hotel, we pride ourselves in our planet responsibilities and we attempt in every way commercially possible and without impacting on our customer comforts to protect our environment by minimising our carbon footprint at every opportunity.

These are some of the ways in which we have taken climate action protection measures:

Switch from oil-fired burners to air to water heat pump systems.

Water heat pumps are highly efficient, ecologically friendly.

Smart temperature-controlled fan assisted throughout the hotel.

 Controlled heating for swimming pool, jacuzzi, air heating and underground heating. 

This system on an annual basis equates to a saving of 2270 tonnes of Carbon annually.

The hotel system was a finalist in the National Heat Pump awards for 2012 and was the overall outright winner in 2013.

Centralisation of our cooling systems.

Through utilising Glycol in our cooling system, the Riverside Park Hotel have been able to centralise their cooling source and run all of the beer cooling and all of our walk-in fridges from one chiller system and have eliminated the use of older damaging refrigerant gases for a more modern, much more efficient, safer and eco-friendly system. This system is delivering annual electrical savings of €5,500 per annum 

Utilisation of heated gases (by-product) for pre-heating all hot water.

The gas coolant system which uses the incoming cold water to cool down the refrigerant gas from our centralised system means we effectively get ‘free hot water’ from our Beer Cooling system. This gas would normally be cooled down by using electricity to run fans to cool the gas through a traditional radiator type system but instead we run the gas through a ‘highly efficient hot water cylinder’ and the cold incoming water cools down the gas before going on to our hot water system This delivers over a half million litres of hot water to the hotel customers every year. This system has delivered gas usage savings of €1,800 per annum. 

Towel laundering as required.

In order to minimise the amount of chemicals and energy used in needles laundry of clean towels, our housekeeping staff only remove, and launder towels as required by our bedroom guests, the Riverside encourage guests to only launder used towels

The elimination of hundreds of thousands of single use plastic soap bottles having been replaced by a superior pump dispensed product through the use of ‘Voya’ products throughout 

We have chosen to eliminate the thousands of plastic soap/shampoo/bodywash containers dumped every year by the hotel by applying an in-room pump system whereby we re-fill the pump bottles in the room on a daily basis with a sustainable and non-damaging soap extracted from seaweed made here in Ireland in Sligo by the Voya company. By eliminating the cost of smaller individual bottles, the Riverside Park Hotel was able to invest in far superior and well recognised cleansing product. 

Adoption of rigid re-cycling policy throughout the hotel.

The Riverside Park hotel has introduced a re- cycling programme by purchasing a large quantity of food composting and recycling bins which are located throughout the hotel. These bins are used to help our back of house teams recycle as many items as possible in order to drastically reduce what we send to landfill. 

Energy Efficient LED Lighting programme. 

The Riverside Park Hotel has reduced its energy bills from lighting by 70% by replacing all lights to LED Lighting.  

Food Disposal Unit

The Riverside Park Hotel has a food waste processing system in operation that is used to reduce waste costs by 80% and reduce the amount of waste that we send to land fill. The system works by mulching all food into waste and then the waste is pumped from the Intake to a Holding Tank. At the end of the process the waste is delivered automatically from the Holding Tank to an RDI Dehydrator which is located adjacent to the tank. The Dehydrator removes the water from the waste with the remaining solid matter collected in a bin. The result is a reduction in waste volume by up to 80%.

Solar Panels

We are delighted to have partnered with MarVal Power to install solar PV panels on our roof in a effort to reduce our carbon footprint and stride towards a greener future. MarVal Power designed an impressive system of 612 Longi 415W state-of-the-art solar panels and 2 x 110kW SMA Core 2 inverters that were installed across our rooftop. The cutting-edge monitoring of the panels enables the energy production and consumption to be tracked in real-time allowing us to optimize our energy usage on a daily basis. The solar PV system generates clean, renewable energy on-site which provides one-fifth of our total energy needs meaning we can run exclusively on solar for a period of time on different days.

The contribution made through this investment can be realised in the amount of carbon emissions saved. To put this into context, our carbon footprint is reduced by 80t which is the equivalent of planting 1,077 trees or a distanced of 67,315kms – 9 long haul flights or travelling from Wexford to Auckland four times. The installation of the solar PV panels is enabling us to provide our guests with a unique experience where they can enjoy luxurious hospitality while knowing that their stay is powered by renewable energy.