15 management companies earn MDO Sustainability certification

In three months since launching the myDigitalOffice Sustainability calculator and certification, 15 hotel management companies comprising more than 1,500 hotels have qualified. According to the company, their collective efforts are saving 743 trees and 134 cubic feet of landfill waste annually.

The MDO Sustainability Certification was launched in November as a way to spotlight on hotel owners and operators dedicated to reducing their environmental footprint. Companies such as Crestline Hotels & Resorts, Commonwealth Hotels, Remington Hotels, McNeill Hotel Company, and Apple REIT have received certification. These companies have each adopted a paperless night audit process, which moves critical financial documents into a secure, digital environment for storage and compliance. The process can be directly correlated to significant reduction in tree and forest harvesting. 

According to the Sustainable Hospitality Alliance, to keep pace with the targets outlined in the Paris Agreement, the global hotel industry needs to reduce carbon emissions per room per year by 66 percent by 2030 and 90 percent by 2050. Hotel companies have aligned themselves with science-based target initiatives, which manage emissions reductions and net-zero commitments. Many hotel companies have adopted near-term targets on the path to achieving net zero.

MDO Sustainability certification assists hotels in ESG efforts

In addition to helping its partners eliminate printing, MDO has a longstanding tradition of planting one tree for every hotel that is currently live on MDO’s myDocs Digital Document Management solution. This year, 2,600 new trees were planted through the National Forest Foundation of Missoula, Mont.

Since MDO began measuring the effects of moving its customer base to digital document management in 2018, the collective impact on the environment has been substantial. As of January, MDO and its customers’ efforts contributed to saving 45,470 trees, 7,653 cubic yards of landfill, and 17,393,592 gallons of wastewater.

“Adopting digital document management alongside MDO is one step we are taking as a company to reduce our impact on the environment, and we’re proud of the measurable results highlighted in MDO’s Sustainability Certification,” McNeill Hotel Company President Travis Murray said in a statement. 

In addition to the sustainability results, calculations show that a company with 10 hotels that adopts a paperless night audit process averages $8,220 in cost savings in the first year.