Pressrelease, November 23, 2018
Icehotel has been certified an eco hotel by the Nordic Swan Ecolabel, Scandinavia’s most comprehensive eco labelling programme. With a substantial portion of rooms melting away and being re-built out of ice and snow every year, it has proven a unique challenge for the certification team and Icehotel.
The first ever Swan certified hotel made of ice and snow
It has been a complex and intense process for Icehotel to achieve the Swan certification, and despite the label’s many year’s of experience, this project has presented new challenges and unprecendented circumstances. An important part of the certification process is to benchmark consumption against hotel square meters – and how do you measure that when half of the rooms only exists between December and April?
The process of certification thoroughly examines all areas of operations, from energy and water consumption to waste management and eco purchasing policies; as well as site inspections and documentation. Icehotel is eco-labeled for all aspects of hotel guest consumption, including cold and warm hotel rooms, restaurants and meeting spaces.
Kerstin Nilsson, Senior Quality Advisor at Icehotel says:
It’s with great joy and pride that we receive the Nordic Swan Ecolabel. The Torne River is the mother of our product and of us as a business. She’s provided our guests with life enriching experiences for over thirty years. We were the European pioneers of guided river rafting tours and we were the first in the world to build a hotel and art exhibition using only frozen water.
Kerstin continues;
We are dependent on clean water, clean air and unspoilt nature. With a certification like this, it helps us in our day-to-day sustainability within the organization, and it’s a clear message for our clients and partners about our commitment. I hope we can inspire other companies to follow our lead, even if you have a unique product and have to find new ways as you go.
The Swan marks the second new eco label within a year for Icehotel, who was certified a Sustainable Arctic Destination in the spring.
About the Nordic Swan Eco Label
The Nordic Swan Ecolabel, was born in 1989 when the Nordic council of ministers founded “the Swan” to help consumers choose environmentally concious products. It all started with Nordic Ecolabelled copying paper and batteries, but today you can choose from over 10 000 products and services carrying the Nordic Swan Ecolabel. After a few years, the EU founded the official European Ecolabel. Ecolabelling Sweden, a state owned non-profit company, is responsible for both the Nordic Swan Ecolabel aswell as the EU Ecolabel in Sweden.
About Icehotel
Icehotel opened in 1989 and is beside a hotel also an art exhibition with ever-changing art out of ice and snow. Icehotel is created in a new guise every winter, completely made out of natural ice from Torne River, one of Sweden’s national rivers and last untouched waters. When the winter season’s Icehotel has melted back into the river in the spring, a part of the hotel remains; a place where visitors can experience the ice and snow year-round.
