OekoBusiness Wien - Ecolabel for Tourism

The Ecolabel for Tourism is a national environmental programme that has been specifically designed for tourism and the hospitality industry. Action is taken mainly in the areas of solid waste, waste water, energy efficiency, ecological purchasing and ecological cleaning. For this purpose, the Austrian Consumer Protection Association (VKI) has prepared a catalogue of potential actions that is based on up-to-date standards of environmentally sound management in the tourism industry.

The programme is open to all enterprises of Vienna's hospitality industry, from simple pubs to five-star restaurants, from cafés to wineries, from small-sized city hotels to the large facilities of international hotel chains.

There is a catalogue of basic criteria that can be adapted to take into account individualised measures as well. Examples include the use of non-polluting cleaning agents, state-of-the art heating control systems and optimum regimes for waste prevention and waste separation. These measures are environmentally supportive and help to cut operating expenses while ensuring equal, or even better, quality of service. An independent team of experts from the Consumer Protection Association evaluates the operation, and the Ecolabel is awarded if all criteria are met.