Green Key
In December 2007, Hotel de l’Europe became the first Five Star certified hotel of the Green Key Program in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The hotel was awarded for its outstanding commitment to environmental performance. They even got the highest level of performance which can be achieved, the ‘Golden’ status. It perfectly fits to the recently launched ‘Leading Green Link Program’.
The staff of Hotel de l’Europe worked hard to obtain this status and is proud to be the initiator at this level of hospitality in The Netherlands. The hope is that more hotels will follow, as the environment needs this kind of ‘doing green business’ more than ever before.
To obtain The Green Key the hotel had to fulfill a long list of environmental requirements. These requirements are contained in a number of criteria. Besides pure environmental demands, the criteria include demands on policy and action plans. The Green Key is an international eco-label for tourism products. Not all criteria are available in all countries. It is an ongoing work to develop criteria for the international campaign.
The Green Key has been adopted as the fifth FEE campaign. FEE is Foundation for Environmental Education and runs campaigns in 37 countries. The FEE campaigns are Blue Flag, Young Reporters for the Environment, Learning About Forests, Eco Schools, and now also the Green Key. The Green Key has been made available to all 37 countries in the FEE network. At this point, the Green Key is established in six countries and a number of other countries are preparing to run the campaign.