One of the winners of the grant competition for small and medium-sized businesses on Lake Baikal is the Baikal Plaza Hotel from Ulan-Ude. With the financial support of the Foundation in the amount of 142,212 rubles, its team implements an eco–educational annual program for employees and clients called «Reduce by yourself and teach others!». Olga Batorova, director of the Baikal Plaza Hotel, told us what topics would be covered during the training, and how people living and working at the hotel related to «green» initiatives.
— How does your staff feel about the environmental agenda? How does it respond to events?
The staff of the Baikal Plaza Hotel treats the environmental agenda extremely positively. We have already explained the importance of rational consumption of natural resources, posted memos calling for a thrifty attitude in office premises, etc. We can already see the result even from an economic point of view, as we observe lower water and electricity consumption in natural terms compared to the same period of the pre-pandemic year.
In addition, our staff is actively engaged in separate waste collection not only in the workplace, but also at home. In the period from September to December, we recycled about 2.5 tons of valuable recyclables, namely plastic, glass and waste paper.
— What environmental problems are most concerned about the hotel staff? What aspects of sustainable development exactly do you plan to teach them?
First of all, of course, we are concerned about the problem of pollution of the Baikal territory and our city with garbage, so we would like to learn the «Zero Waste» system. We held preliminary talks with an invited expert and discussed an approximate training plan on the following topics:
1. What is the «Zero Waste» system?
2. Refuse. Replacement of disposable items with reusable ones.
3. Reduce. Buy what you need. The choice of high-quality things. Repair.
4. Reuse. Giving unnecessary things to people, exchange.
5. Recycle. Principles of separate waste collection. Processing in Ulan-Ude, reception points.
6. Compost. Processing of organic waste.
— How will the implementation of the project affect your target audience — tenants (companies renting offices in the business center at the hotel)?
We also plan to attract tenants to separate waste collection. We would really like them to understand the problems of ecology, and their thinking has changed towards lean consumption, and they have started using these principles at home and in offices.
— Do the hotel’s events get any response among the guests, as well as other hotels?
There are no reviews from the guests about our environmental initiatives yet, but we also do not receive outrages and complaints about the fact that, for example, we refused bottled water in plastic, or replaced disposable bottles with cosmetic products in the rooms with reusable dispensers. We consider this a positive sign.

The hotel team has already held the first educational events with the participation of eco-activist Tatiana Nikiforova, where everyone was told about the basic rules of waste sorting. Subscribe to us on social networks to be the first to get news about master classes from the Baikal Plaza Hotel team!
Since 2021, Lake Baikal Foundation has been implementing a grant contest for small and medium-sized businesses on Lake Baikal with «Green Steps». The purpose of the contest is to contribute to the dissemination of sustainable environmental practices and the introduction of green technologies among entrepreneurs of the Baikal region, as well as to the implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Agenda in the Irkutsk region and the Republic of Buryatia. The project is being implemented with the support of the Asia-Pacific Bank.