Stenden Hotel Leeuwarden

The sustainable Pure Eco Collection fits our style perfectly

Learning and experience company Stenden Hotel of the Stenden Hogeschool in Leeuwarden recently extended its contract with Blycolin for the hotel and restaurant’s linen service. A great moment for the educational institute to transfer to the sustainable Pure Eco Collection by Blycolin. Anita van de Meer of the Stenden Hotel explains how and why. Pure Eco linen is produced with soft 100% biological cotton with the GOTS label (Global Organic Textile Standard). This is a worldwide standard that ensures environmentally-friendly means and procedures are used. On cotton plantations that are GOTS certified, no toxic and chemical pesticides are used, but only natural and innocuous dye and bleach are applied in the production of cotton fabrics. Also, the amount of water that is used is severely reduced.  Besides this, there is a Fairtrade label that indicates that the farmers receive an honest price and child labor is excluded.

Using products

“Our hotel with 28 rooms is Green Key certified”, Anita van de Meer states. “We think you should show that in every aspect and demonstrate that you use the products on the market. During meetings on the contract extension, it was great to see that Blycolin carries all possibilities in its assortment. With, for instance, Pure Eco linen for our hotel rooms and our restaurant. It is even better that Pure Eco matches our food concept ‘the new Dutch cuisine’ by Albert Kooy. In that concept, food is handled very consciously and resonsibly by presenting a menu according to the 80/20 principle. Eighty percent vegetables and twenty percent meat.”

Raising awareness

Stenden Hotel proudly shows and tells everyone that it uses sustainable linen. Of course to their guests, but also and especially to their students. “It is important that our students, during their education here, become aware that this sustainable type of linen is very soft and that fine quality is becoming more mainstream. And that you can easily work with it, and probably even should work with it. The great thing is that we have made our students aware by introducing Pure Eco here. For instance, by asking the students in housekeeping how they would indicate that there is sustainable linen on the beds in the room. That strengthens the awareness of ‘what do I do in this respect?’And the steps don’t have to be huge. Even with smaller steps, you can achieve great things.”

Less miles

Take the big labels on the table linen in our restaurant. We don’t cut them off, because we want to show that sustainability matters to us and that we are active about it. Our students and many of our guests notice. Another example arose during the contract negotiations with Blycolin. We had also invited other parties to be able to compare quotations and qualities. One of the bidders had its laundry somewhere in the middle of the country. ‘Our’ laundry of Blycolin is up north, as are we. It makes you think about logistical aspects. We deliberately chose Blycolin with a laundry up north to contribute to the decrease of miles being driven.”