Sustainability in downtown San Jose, CR.

Hotel Presidente, San Jose, Costa Rica

The Hotel Presidente in downtown San Jose is participating in a program known as the Five Leaf Program. The object of this program is to obtain a Certificate of Sustainable Tourism from the Costa Rican National Tourism Board. This certification is voluntary to those companies who wish to participate, but it is not an easy process to obtain recognition for sustainability efforts.

 The Hotel Presidente has managed to obtain 4 out of 5 possible leaves, as well as also receiving other certificates for its environmental consciousness.

Management personnel at the hotel are happy to sit down with guests and walk them through some of Hotel Presidente's social and environmental sustainability efforts. The hotel also provides guests with adequate signage to inform hotel guests on how they can take an active role in helping to conserve the hotel's water and electricity, and provides recycling containers easily accessible for guests to separate their waste into. What guests don't recycle, hotel cleaning staff will sort from the garbage containers themselves.

The hotel also buys locally grown food, and unused food is either donated to hunger charities or given for pig-farming. To the Hotel Presidente, sustainability involves being not simply involved with the physical environment, but also the social environment. The hotel participates in various community projects which incorporate the citizens of San Jose,  from after-school programs for children to downtown urban cleanup efforts, and has made both environmental conservation and social development part of their fundamental corporate values.

For more information on Hotel Presidente's environmental efforts:
www.hotel-presidente.com/eco-tourism