Green initiatives and Charity programs at Four Seasons Singapore
Four Seasons Hotel Singapore is committed to ensuring efficient practices, initiatives and ongoing projects that work toward a sustainable future for the environment.
Supporting Sustainability
One of the environmental sustainability activities by Four Seasons Hotel Singapore is the annual commemoration of Earth Hour with special candlelit organic cuisine at One-Ninety restaurant, the Hotel’s tradition first pioneered in 2008. Over the years, the Hotel has regularly hosted international visiting chefs, positioning One-Ninety restaurant as a champion of modern culinary organic cuisine, which included the introduction of the “Raw Food” movement to the city’s foodies. One-Ninety restaurant was also first to introduce the Organic Salad Bar, which offers only the freshest of organic produce during its daily Lunch Semi-Buffet.
As part of its green initiatives, in 2008 the Hotel’s employees developed their very own organic backyard eco-garden, from which chefs continue to harvest some of the restaurants’ cooking ingredients - herbs, spices, chili, lime, okra, bok choy, kai-lan (Chinese broccoli) and bananas, to name a few.
Four Seasons Hotel Singapore also participates in a corporate wide initiative offering Greening Meetings , which allow meeting planners to select a variety of environmentally friendly options to create sustainable events. These include going paperless, dry erase boards as an alternative to flip charts, recycling bins in meeting and guest rooms, energy saving room temperature settings, green menus with more vegetarian and organic options, and more.
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The Hotel also participates in the company’s support sustainability movement, which offers guests the option to be part of a good cause by choosing not to have their bed sheets and towels refreshed until after a few nights of stay. Four Seasons Hotel Singapore also uses only environmentally-friendly detergent and cleaning chemicals. In terms of energy-saving, all the Hotel’s guestroom and public area lighting has been re-lamped to energy-saving bulbs, and the installation of energy-saving air-conditioning cooling units is part of an ongoing yearly upgrade program. Additional efforts in energy conservation include guestroom air-condition settings at 23 degrees, which can be customised to suit each guests’ preference after check-in.
Last year, the award-winning Spa at Four Seasons Hotel Singapore introduced the first 100 percent chemical-free product in the city with products and treatments by Sodashi, considered the “\purest spa product range in the world.
Building Communities
Like all Four Seasons locations, Four Seasons Hotel Singapore is dedicated to building communities.
Back-of-the-house efforts at Four Seasons Hotel Singapore include recycling products and, since 2003, the Food Waste Management program, which the Hotel pioneered in partnership with Food from the Heart, a local company that has been channeling unsold baked goods to welfare organisations and needy families in Singapore.
Four Seasons Hotel Singapore has also continuously made efforts to engage its staff in other community service outreach programs. Some of the programs include Project 11, which donates beverage can tabs to Prostheses Foundation of HRH The Princess Mother for the production of prosthetic limbs in Thailand, and Book Matters, where staff donated books to help impoverished children in Asia fight illiteracy.
Advancing Cancer Research
Four Seasons Hotel Singapore launched Sow a Seed and Save a Life in 2011. The program allows Hotel guests and meeting groups with a donation of SGD 25.00 per person for seeds to plant at the Hotel’s organic backyard garden. Proceeds go to the annual Run For Hope fund.
For more than 30 years, Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts has been deeply committed to the cause of advancing cancer research. Initially a one-time event inspired by a Canadian amputee, Terry Fox, fund-raising activities have now spread to the company’s hotels and resorts around the world, raising millions of dollars annually to benefit cancer research and care facilities in their locations. In its locale, Four Seasons Hotel Singapore carries on this tradition by organising Run For Hope on a yearly basis, since the Hotel’s opening in 1994, together with The Regent Singapore in support of The National Cancer Centre of Singapore. Gathering over the years a total of more than 80,000 runners through the various tracks held at Botanic Gardens, Sentosa and East Coast Park, this activity has raised more than SGD 3 million for cancer research in Singapore.