For a long time, it was a natural part of every hotel room and it was hard to imagine a hotel without it: the minibar. However, this expensive luxury is not only harmful to the environment but often simply unnecessary.
Mini coolers consume disproportionately high amounts of electricity and cause unnecessary plastic waste. Are there any sustainable alternatives to the minibar? Find out in this blog post if you can still enjoy the convenience of a minibar.

COMFORT AT THE EXPENSE OF THE ENVIRONMENT?

Did you know that a so-called minibar uses almost four times as much electricity as a classic household refrigerator? Yet it only has a quarter of the volume. Everything but efficient, right? A minibar is running even when there are no guests in the room, and it also produces a lot of garbage. Why? Because the small water bottles, champagne bottles, and soft drinks as well as snacks and sweets in small format cause much more packaging waste in comparison to a package or bottle in normal size. It is now clear that by not having a minibar, you save a lot of CO2 and waste. But of course, we don’t want to do without a certain amount of convenience, do we?

HEALTHY SNACKS & DRINKS AT THE HOTEL BAR

Why not just go to the hotel bar as a sustainable alternative to the minibar? It is actually much nicer to have a drink or a small snack in company, isn’t it? In the Hotel Speicher am Ziegelsee in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, for example, there is the cozy piano bar. Like many green hotels, the hotel completely abandons minibars in the hotel rooms. Okelmann’s also cuts out the mini-fridge in the rooms and offers a snack bar with organic snacks that everyone can help out 24 hours a day. The little shop runs successfully on a basis of trust.

ZERO WASTE WITH FREE DRINKING WATER

Water from plastic bottles is not supposed to be that healthy anyway. Even if the bottles are recycled, either through a deposit system or the special recycling system, it is better not to produce plastic waste in the first place, isn’t it? Some of our hotels therefore offer their guests and employees free drinking water from water dispensers. For example the Puri Dajuma on Bali. The guests can fill up their drinking bottles at various drinking fountains free of charge. The organic and family hotel Gut Nisdorf on the Bodden coast of the Baltic Sea also offers this service in the form of a BRITA water dispenser, which is freely accessible in the large hall.

MORE COMFORT, LESS CO2 CONSUMPTION

Do you want to have drinks in your room and at the same time protect the environment? The Hotel Speicher offers its guests a 24h beverage service to their rooms. What more do you want? A further alternative are so-called community refrigerators, e.g. in the breakfast room or other freely accessible common rooms. In the Hotel Okelmann’s, for example, there is a refrigerator at the reception desk. In the large hall of the family hotel Gut Nisdorf there is a large beverage refrigerator, where guests can help themselves 24 hours a day, as well as a fully automatic coffee machine.

It might be a bit of an adjustment at first, but actually, it’s not that hard to do without a minibar, is it? Because when there are so many good alternatives, the loss is more than compensated. Our green pearls are definitely making a big effort to make sure that you still have all the comfort you need!

Read more: SUSTAINABLE HOUSEKEEPING IN THE HOTEL – AVOID DISPOSABLES AND LAUNDRY

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