Denise Naguib, Vice President of Sustainability & Supplier Diversity at Marriott International, joins the show to outline what the hotel industry is doing to make travel more sustainable. Across its 31 hotel brands, Marriott International’s portfolio includes more than 8,500 properties spanning 138 countries and territories. This huge, global footprint presents an array of sustainability challenges because Marriott’s hotels are not cookie cutter. Operating a massive hotel and convention center in a metropolis like New York, London, Tokyo, Sydney or Cape Town is very different from operating a small, boutique resort in some exotic location. The variety of sustainability challenges those different kinds of properties present is seemingly endless ... and Denise and the team at Marriott work to tackle them all.
More resources
Serve 360: Doing Good in Every Direction
Marriott International's 2023 Serve 360 Report
Highlights from Denise Naguib
An outline of Marriott's Serve 360 platform - (3:16)
Marriott's specific sustainability goals - (5:07)
Tackling global goals at local properties around the world - (7:16)
Golf as an example of sharing best practices on a global scale - (8:56)
Sustainability as a way to attract travelers - (11:07)
How Marriott communicates sustainability throughout its supply chain - (13:39)
Collaboration within the hospitality industry - (15:53)
How the pandemic changed business travelers' preferences - (22:39)
How Marriott is doing on achieving its sustainability goals - (26:02)
Marriott's renewable energy portfolio - (30:37)
Innovative ways to conserve water - (31:47)
Advice on preparing to eastablish Science-Based Targets - (33:16)
The one challenge Denise spends the most time pondering - (37:20)
Denise's bold prediction for hotel sustainability in 5-10 years - (38:55)
Denise Naguib, Vice President of Sustainability & Supplier Diversity at Marriott International, joins the show to outline what the hotel industry is doing to make travel more sustainable. Across its 31 hotel brands, Marriott International’s portfolio includes more than 8,500 properties spanning 138 countries and territories. This huge, global footprint presents an array of sustainability challenges because Marriott’s hotels are not cookie cutter. Operating a massive hotel and convention center in a metropolis like New York, London, Tokyo, Sydney or Cape Town is very different from operating a small, boutique resort in some exotic location. The variety of sustainability challenges those different kinds of properties present is seemingly endless ... and Denise and the team at Marriott work to tackle them all.
More resources
Serve 360: Doing Good in Every Direction
Marriott International's 2023 Serve 360 Report
Highlights from Denise Naguib
An outline of Marriott's Serve 360 platform - (3:16)
Marriott's specific sustainability goals - (5:07)
Tackling global goals at local properties around the world - (7:16)
Golf as an example of sharing best practices on a global scale - (8:56)
Sustainability as a way to attract travelers - (11:07)
How Marriott communicates sustainability throughout its supply chain - (13:39)
Collaboration within the hospitality industry - (15:53)
How the pandemic changed business travelers' preferences - (22:39)
How Marriott is doing on achieving its sustainability goals - (26:02)
Marriott's renewable energy portfolio - (30:37)
Innovative ways to conserve water - (31:47)
Advice on preparing to eastablish Science-Based Targets - (33:16)
The one challenge Denise spends the most time pondering - (37:20)
Denise's bold prediction for hotel sustainability in 5-10 years - (38:55)
(Note: This transcript was created using artificial intelligence. It has not been edited verbatim.)
Sean McMahon 00:09
Hello everyone and welcome to the Sustainability SmartPod. I'm your host Sean McMahon. The rest of the sustainability smart pod gang is off this week, but I'm here to bring you an interview I've been looking forward to for quite some time. Denise Naguib is the Vice President of Sustainability and Supplier Diversity at Marriott International.
Across its 31 hotel brands. Marriott's portfolio includes more than 8500 properties spanning 138 countries and territories. That huge global footprint is part of the reason I'm so excited to talk to Denise because think about it. Marriott Hotels are not cookie cutter, operating a massive hotel and Convention Center. In some metropolis like New York, London, Tokyo, Sydney or Cape Town is very different from operating a smaller Boutique Resort in some exotic location. But Marriott's properties run the gamut. The variety of sustainability challenges those different kinds of properties present is seemingly endless. But Denise and the team at Marriott work to tackle them all. I enjoyed learning from Denise about how Marriott and the wider hotel industry established global benchmarks for measuring things like carbon emissions and water usage. We're talking about data points that can provide apples to apples comparisons for all those various locations around the world.
And now that travel has bounced back from the pandemic, devising and implementing sustainability strategies is more important than ever, from company and industry wide initiatives that travelers might never notice. To thoughtful measures that nudge guests to travel in more sustainable ways. Marriott is working hard to offer world class experiences, while also protecting the world around us.
But before we hear from Denise, just a quick look ahead. Coming up soon, we'll be hearing more about how organizations can take a regenerative approach to circular supply chains and enterprise sustainability. We're gonna be joined by Andrea Murphy, Director of the Office of Environmental Affairs and Sustainability at Panasonic, North America. Andrea will discuss best practices for sustainability leaders looking to operationalize activities across several businesses with specific examples from circular economies being utilized in both the electric vehicle and consumer packaged goods industries.
We're also putting together an episode where you'll hear from all the winners of the American Chemistry Council's Sustainability Leadership Awards. That show is going to be a roundup of insights from the winners of five different categories. So trust me, there's lots of information on tap in that particular episode. So yeah, lots of incredible sustainability entails on the way for this podcast. But for now, let's kick things off with the Denise Naguib from Marriott International.
Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining me today. My guest is Denise Naguib from Marriott. Denise, how you doing today?
Denise Naguib 03:09
Great, Sean, how are you doing?
Sean McMahon 03:10
I'm fantastic. It's mid summer Monday. And I'm actually feeling you know, vibrant and energetic. I mean, really excited to have you on obviously a company like Marriott with such a global footprint. I think a lot of our listeners would like to hear the lessons you've learned and things that you and your organization have tackled when it comes to sustainability. So let's set the table a little bit for our listeners. What is Marriott sustainability initiative? And how do you outline your goals?
Denise Naguib 03:35
Well, fantastic. And thank you again, for having me. I'm excited for the conversation. I've been working on sustainability for a long time, Sean. So this is really great to always talk about it. From a merit perspective, we are on our second set of sustainability and social impact goals. And really, our platform when we launched in 2017 is called Serve 360. And it touches on a lot of goals around sustainability and social impact. From an environmental sustainability perspective, we look at it in a couple of different ways. One of our sections within Serve 360, which is framed in four coordinates. One of the coordinates is called nurture our world and it's really about taking care of the people and the planet that we get to be part of every single day. And so as we think about that, from a planet perspective, we look at how do we volunteer our time and put our energy into protecting the natural ecosystems around the hotels where we operate. And our other big area of focus on sustainability is called sustained, responsible operations. That's a second coordinate in our platform. And it really looks at the sustainability within the four walls of our hotels. So how do we think about and address things like reducing our water footprint, our carbon footprint, our waste addressing food waste? How do we think about responsibly sourcing products, designing and operating our hotels in a more sustainable way? And addressing and mitigating risks associate With climate change, so that makes up sort of our suite of resources and goals around our sustainability efforts.
Sean McMahon 05:07
Alright, and you mentioned the water, carbon waste and renewable electricity goals. So walk us through those, what were some of the specific goals that Marriott set.
Denise Naguib 05:16
So our first one is around water. And our goal is to reduce our water footprint by 15%. Almost all of our goals are based on a 2016 baseline. And our out year is 2025. So 15% reduction in our water footprint between our 2016, baseline and 2025. Our second goal currently is our carbon footprint reduction goal of 30%. We are working on a science based target. So our goal will actually be modified to be different than what it is today. And we can certainly talk about that. But for now, it's 30% reduction from our 2016 baseline to 2025. Then we talk about waste or waste footprint reduction goal is 45% reduction between 2016 and 2025. And included in that is a specific goal to reduce our food waste by 50%. We also have set a goal to drive renewable energy in our hotels, and that goal is 30% renewable electricity, again by 2025. And we have a whole suite of goals around our built environment. So everything from driving sustainable certifications, where we hope to get 100% of our hotels to have a third party sustainability certification, to addressing things on our procurement side and looking at 10 categories that we really buy a lot of products, and six of them are food and beverage. Four of them are things like textiles and rooms, operations categories. And our goal is to get 95% of our spend to be responsibly spent in those categories. And that looks at both environmental and social. And then we're also looking at things in our built environment in terms of our design standards, how do we think about and address the built environment on the front end, so that on the back end, we are having a more sustainable hotel as we go to operate it but really thinking about those design standards, so many details around all of those goals?
Sean McMahon 07:06
Yeah, I understand all those are kind of segmented goals at times. And then also I do want to circle back and hear how you're doing on achieving those goals. And, and yeah, hear a little bit more about the science based targets and what the process is like for setting those. But one of the biggest questions I have for you is, like I mentioned at the top global company operating in countries all around the world. So I would assume that there are some of those categories, you know, waste or water are easier to tackle in some countries than others. So how do you navigate that?
Denise Naguib 07:35
Yeah, great question. It is complicated. We have over 8500 hotels and almost 140 countries, we're growing all the time as a company. And it's really important for us to think about how do we drive a global set of goals, but understanding the different ways by which sometimes that could be tackled, there are challenges with every one of these goals, you know, we did not make them because they were easy to achieve. And so it's less about individual countries, and the challenges within that. But thinking about even our operations, you know, how do we modify how we operate a hotel today, if it doesn't even have the ability to have a recycling bin at the back dock? Right? That's, that's universal, that's not about a specific country? How do we think about addressing food waste when we have been programmed to operate our catering programming in a certain way? How do we address things like water reduction when we want to give our guests the best experience possible when they're at a resort environment? So it's less about sort of how do we tackle one at a time challenges, and holistically understanding that we have to make fundamental changes to how we build and operate hotels. And we have to work with our continent teams to understand where we can pull the greater levers and where sometimes we're already doing a lot in those specific areas.
Sean McMahon 08:57
Any examples, so many lessons learned that you might have been able to take from one place and apply to a country or a location that might not have had that capability in the past.
Denise Naguib 09:05
Yeah. An interesting example that we don't talk a lot about is our golf programming. We have a lot of hotels that are around golf courses, and our golf team have been really driving things like reducing water, native plants, really thinking about the ecosystem that they're building around the golf courses to keep the birds and the bees and the butterflies happy. And those are things that that particular group running the golf courses took on on the road, they went through and got Audubon certified as an example. But now our teams around the world are looking to those examples to say, hey, how do we better think about landscaping and managing water? In a landscape environment? How do we transition some of the places where we have to have non native species and really think about transitioning to more native plants so that we can use less water? So that's kind of a global view of how a group really took it on themselves. I think another area of opportunity is from a food waste perspective, we have had a group of hotels that were already doing a lot of food waste, we started learning from them, we did a bunch of tests with them to try different models and help us understand more and leverage their great work. And they're kind of moving forward ahead of others. And then now we have just launched in April, a food waste reduction rally across the globe, where we're asking all hotels to share with us their best practices on food waste, we're gathering all those great resources, and everybody's taking different actions, some are activating their on property associates, some are engaging with their communities. And we're gathering all those great best practices and pulling them together into a toolkit for others to be able to use to So really taking, again, some some that are moving far ahead faster, and really leveraging that for others to be able to tag along and follow. Follow the leaders.
Sean McMahon 10:57
Yeah, and you kinda mentioned there, how you're working with some of your associates and employees to implement these changes. But I want to talk a little bit about how you interact with guests. Right? So I think a lot of people are familiar now with you go to hotel, a lot of times, there's a little sign saying, Hey, if you only need new towels, or if you need these things, you know, we're trying to save water. What are some other ways that your organization is is nudging guests to embrace new sustainability practices?
Denise Naguib 11:23
Yeah, it's, it's interesting, because yeah, you're right, people for a long time have understood, okay, if I hang up my towel, that towel is not going to be changed, and it'll reduce water and energy use and chemicals, etc. I think now it's becoming much more of that, how do we communicate holistically the sustainability efforts of a hotel before they even book so that they can use that as part of their decision making. So we have transparently shared our hotel sustainability information, initially with our b2b partners, so all of our corporate customers through RFPs, etc. For over a decade, we've been giving them the carbon footprint in the water footprint, certifications, etc. We've now put that directly on our individual hotel websites, you can go to any hotel that you're trying to book with us, look up the sustainability section. And there are up to five attributes that you can see as a traveler, that you can use as part of your decision making. So you can see the carbon footprint per occupied room night. So you can see what that might look like the water footprint is for that hotel, you can see if they have a third party sustainability certification, you can see if they're compliant with guestroom recycling, and fifth is our Eevee charging, if you are an Eevee driver, or like I am, it is really important to understand that you can charge your car if you're traveling, especially if you're on a road trip. But those five attributes for the traveler, whether it's business traveler, or leisure travelers are now front and center. Now today, you can't filter and sort by them, but they're there, you can use them as part of your decision making. If you are really interested in that and want to really drive sustainability in that decision for which hotel, you're going to stay up, we also are moving into more and more attributes and sharing more of that information again, because we know customers are asking for it, they want to leverage this information. Now there might be a vital few on the front end that are really ahead of the pack here and trying to use this information. But we're seeing it very clearly in the business to business relationships that we have, where a lot of corporations are using that and sharing that with their travelers and helping them by force ranking hotels that have more sustainable attributes than others. So that's one really specific way we're sharing that data. And again, are seeing a lot of really good results in how travelers are using that for understanding how they can be more sustainable in their travels stay.
Sean McMahon 13:39
Yeah, and you've also mentioned a little bit about vendors. So what's the communication like with them, you know, you're obviously in a position, we could perhaps hold them accountable for some of their practices. And obviously, scope one, two and three stuff coming down the pipeline, it's, it's going to be more important conversation. So what does that interaction look like right now, and also does that vary, you know, regionally or from country to country.
Denise Naguib 13:59
From a supply chain perspective, as I mentioned, we have these top 10 categories that we're really been focused on since we launched our goals in 2017. So for the categories within that, like animal proteins, and seafood and bottled water and textiles, we've already engaged with our suppliers more deeply by sharing with them what our criteria is and what we are going to be holding them accountable to deliver against. That was sort of step one, here's sort of what what's coming at you soon. The second step is we have engaged our suppliers first in North America. And then now we're going globally to use a tool called EcoVadis, which is really for them to be rated. We use it as well, because our customers have asked us to do it as a supplier. So they get rated on their social and environmental practices. It varies based on the size of the company, how much you have to answer, but that helps us really get a foundational baseline of where are our suppliers in their journey across these very important topics. Are they addressing some of these Important things like human rights, labor, emissions, etc. As a starting point, what we're moving into as we're working through our climate strategy is really getting much more granular specific to the point you made around scope, emissions scope, one, two and three emissions. So we have to report on our scope, one, two, and three emissions, our supply chain makes up a big chunk of our scope, three emissions. And so it's really important for us to start the dialogue, work with our suppliers understand where they are on starting the measurement, are they actually measuring their own emissions so that we can understand what our footprint is of that emissions? Are we understanding by product? How much does this have from an emissions perspective versus this product, so that ultimately, we can start making decisions holistically on the impact that those products have on us, the communities that we operate in and our global footprint?
Sean McMahon 15:53
What about your interaction with other hospitality organizations? I mean, I know that sustainability is front and center. And it's one of these things where people like to think they're competitive. But at the end of the day, we're all working towards the same thing. So are there any trade groups or just conversations you have with your peers to brainstorm about best practices where you've either shared stuff that you've learned or you've been able to borrow some stuff that some of your competitors have developed?
Denise Naguib 16:15
Great question, Sean, we've done more than brainstorm. And I will caveat and say I am fiercely competitive, and I absolutely want to win. However, in this particular space of sustainability, we have been working with our competitors for over a decade on everything under the sun, you can imagine on sustainability. We started again in 2012. By developing a sustainability approach to carbon footprinting, we knew that our customers were asking us not just Marriott, but our competitors as well, what the carbon footprint we had a few customers at that point, but we could feel it growing, we then worked across the industry to develop a methodology that we all utilize to understand and provide that carbon footprint for occupied rooms. And for the meeting space, we're using the same math, and we're competing on the execution to get that number smaller and smaller through time. So that was the starting point was the carbon methodology was called the hotel carbon measurement initiative. The second step after that was to create the same kind of approach for water, the hotel water measurement initiative, we're not so creative on our acronyms, but they work. And the last one that launched about a year and a half ago, was the hotel waist measurement methodology. And that was, again to measure waste and food waste. So we don't want to compete on having different ways of doing math, we want to have that stabilized consistent, and then we execute and we compete on the back end, we also provide our data to a centralized place. And that information shows up on hotel footprints.org, where individuals companies can use to compare not by name, what hotel, but if you're in a city, if you're in San Francisco, what's the average carbon footprint for a hotel versus in Miami. And that is fed by the data that we all provide into a benchmarking exercise and tool. So again, we can compete, but we can also be able to benchmark ourselves against our competitors, just like a star rating, for example. But for carbon for water, and soon for waste. We also have developed under the sustainable Hospitality Alliance. And sorry, I didn't mention it. But the sustainable Hospitality Alliance out of the UK, is the organization that we have used to develop these methodologies together with our competitors. The latest effort that we launched was the net positive hospitality pathway. And that really lays out a foundation for all hotels, whether you're at the beginning of your sustainability journey, or working towards net zero, what is it that you should be doing across the way and through those kind of big four stages of this pathway, there are tools and resources either that are already developed or are being developed, again, provided to the industry for free for all to use, so that we can collectively drive the action, because when we each win, we all win. And so it's really important for us to drive these efforts. And so there's a lot of opportunities in the United States, we worked with AH&LA on responsible stay and sharing those best practices. So throughout sort of our engagement, we leverage these partners to really work and pull together the industry. So again, we can align and work on you really beating the big issue, which is, you know, people not wanting to travel because of the sustainability impact. We want people to travel, we want them to do that more sustainably more responsibly. And we want to provide them the insight and information to be able to do that.
Sean McMahon 19:45
So it sounds like there's a lot of collaboration going on, for sure. Are there any other ways that the industry has evolved on the topic of sustainability since you entered this space?
Denise Naguib 19:54
Oh, absolutely. I think the industry holistically is just paying a lot more attention to this not just the sustainability practice. missioners. But I think across the sector, I think it's really wonderful to see our CEOs coming together and really partnering to drive a collaborative effort. I think thinking about, you know, how leaders across the disciplines, whether they're on the sales side, or marketing, or they're, you know, communicating about guest experiences, are addressing and thinking about the value that sustainability plays for the industry and how they can play a more meaningful role in their discipline. So it's not just about what comes out of the sustainability group, but really holistically across the business, how are we thinking about driving more sustainable development and operations of our hotels, I think the industry is also much more willing to talk about it, you know, talk about the risks, talk about the opportunities, there's a lot more conversation being had in the media side of around the industry conversations like we're having today, I think this really exposing this topic to a much broader audience is going to be and will continue to be so important for people to first get a level understanding of what the issues are, and then understand our role from a travel and tourism perspective to drive these areas forward, during the pandemic. And kind of as we came out of the pandemic, when, you know, the stats are crazy, you know, but over 80 plus percent of travelers said they wanted to travel more sustainably. And while they weren't traveling, they knew that when they came to travel, they wanted to do that in a different way than they did before. The you know, the experiences that they had, they saw, I think showed them that travel was a critical part of their experiential engagement. On that note, I also think that there's just so much more focus on experience, right? I mean, our customer engagement teams and our those who are really involved in understanding consumer behaviors are seeing this more and more, right. People don't want things they want experiences. And more and more people want those experiences that are unique in natural ecosystems. So understanding how nature plays a role in our travel and tourism experiences, and how our job from a travel and tourism sector perspective is to continuously think about how we are protecting those natural ecosystems, again, for the sake of the fact that they do a lot of good benefit to the world, but also, that our industry is based on these great experiences, who wants to go to great, beautiful beaches, that aren't clean? Who wants to go to coral reefs that aren't alive, right, who wants to go and hang out in the forest that doesn't have trees? So I think this understanding of we can't disconnect ourselves with nature, and the value that that has, for us, as an industry is really critical.
Sean McMahon 22:39
Okay, now, you mentioned how come another pandemic, a lot of individual travelers wanting to travel and more sustainable ways? Are you seeing that on the corporate front? And not? Not from like corporations? And you know, how they send their individual employees to stay at hotels? But I mean, on the conference front, like, do you get a lot of questions, some organization is going to bring 10,000 people and you're gonna have a conference space? Are they asking you hard questions about, hey, how do you manage the water? How do you manage the, you know, the power and things like that?
Denise Naguib 23:04
Absolutely. I think everyone's in a different place along this journey. But I've had a good opportunity to speak to many of our, you know, largest association customers, and this is absolutely on their radar, it may be it may look different for each of them. Some of them are very focused, for example, on food waste, and how they can be part of the solution and are working with us to reduce the food when they host 10,000 people for an event, right. Others are thinking about these massive trade shows and the waste associated with putting on some of these trade shows. Others are thinking about how do they really produce these events in a different way to reduce the amount of carbon associated with traveling to and from the event. So do they have as its hub and spoke model where they have smaller regional events versus one large event? Are there ways to think about understanding the carbon footprint and making sure that part of their programming is to offset the carbon associated with those events. So I think all across the spectrum, things like engaging in the communities and volunteering in those communities so that people give back to the communities that they're visiting, especially when they have 1000s of hands to really engage and do meaningful work and community that they're coming upon. So I think across the spectrum, we're just seeing much more focus. Now meeting planners are already very, very busy. So these are just added layers to them planning these meetings, but I think they're feeling it both from their attendees and the expectation that attendees have in order, if they're going to go to set conference, what are the things that they're going to want to see actualized and also from leaders across their companies and their organizations and associations saying, if we're going to gather this many people there needs to be clarity that there is a sustainable, you know, social benefit to the gathering of all of these people.
Sean McMahon 24:46
I fully supporting the the folks trying to figure out that part of it and keep those gatherings more sustainable because, gosh, I was at an event or a conference recently and you know, it's one of the ones where it's at the convention center and there's 10 hotels around the city taking people to it and the shuttle bus taking Every one from the hotel to the convention center was one of those massive, huge buses. And mind you this event was for an organization that's very much all about trying to achieve some of the goals we're talking about here today. And I was like, one of two people on that bus. And I was like, really? That's painful. Electric vehicles, you can roll out here, there's nothing that like, it was really painful.
Denise Naguib 25:23
Yeah, that brings up a really good point, Sean, I mean, the balance between meeting the guests needs and ensuring that you're driving sustainability, I mean, clear example you just shared, right? If you were one of two people, but you didn't have a way to walk, or to get back to the hotel that was like three blocks or four blocks or whatever away on a hot sunny day, you would not have been a very happy convention goer. So how do we balance that need of getting you what you need to get to back to where you need to go? And ensuring that you know you're not on 100? Person bus? You know, spinning out some fumes? Exactly.
Sean McMahon 26:02
Okay, well, now I want to circle back to some of the goals you said he laid out, you know, with water, carbon waste, electricity. It's kind of a the pressure moment on you here. Now, Denise? How are you doing on achieving those goals?
Denise Naguib 26:14
Great, great question. So we did just publish our report a couple of days ago. So really excited to share that you can access it on marriott.com, forward slash Serve 360. And, you know, we're doing pretty well, in general, as you can imagine, we were impacted pretty severely with COVID, where there were a couple of years where we weren't asking our hotels to really take on anything extra right. We weren't asking him to our owners to invest in any efforts on these topics. We weren't asking our hotels to drive meaningful change in any of these areas. We've since picked up the pace and I think are really driving a lot of efforts in this space. For example, water, water is a funny one, because we measure water based on occupied rooms. So it looked terrible during the pandemic, because the denominator was so small. Now, it's actually starting to level out as a metric because of the occupancy going up. But overall water usage is going down, people are paying a lot more attention to this very important topic. From a carbon perspective, we're almost at our goal, we're about 25%, towards our 30% goal reduction goal. But as I mentioned before, we're also changing our goal, we are modifying it from an intensity reduction. So you know total amount of carbon divided by meters of conditioned space, which is generally how an intensity metric is measured to an absolute carbon metric, where we are looking at the total amount of emissions we're putting into the atmosphere. And our job over time is to reduce that. And our goal is to cut it in nearly by half by 2030. From our new 2019 baseline, we're finalizing our submission to the science based target initiative right now, and so more to come on that. But that's absolutely a fundamental pivot in our carbon to look at it in a much more rigorous manner, with science, with that will come an update to our renewable energy goal. So believe it or not, we've had our goal for so long, we're now almost six years into our renewable energy goal, that at that time, when we set our goal, it was based on not only on site renewable, but also how much renewable was getting onto the grid in supporting that. So that 30% was inclusive of that. So while now the goal is to really only a measure how much additional renewable energy we have both on site or off site, renewable investments, so that number looks a little bit different because of that, from a certifications perspective, our goal to get to 100%, we're about 29% of the way towards our hotels, getting a third party sustainability certification, but I can tell you just in the last six months since we this because the data I'm referring to is the year end 2022. In the last six months, we have had dozens, if not 100, plus hotels get certified. So we're gonna continue to see that number rise through time. From a responsible sourcing perspective, we're really tackled it in kind of two phases. One, we really started focusing on cage free eggs as one big goal, or that particular goal is 100%. And so we've been seeing that metric rise over time. And we have a really heightened focus to drive that particular commodity. Again, consumer facing lots of asks around that particular product. We all see it in our grocery stores all the time. So people know and can get their head around what does a cage free egg mean? So that that metric is going up. But ultimately, as we work into 23, the end of 23 and 24 and 25. We're taking those top 10 categories and really flipping them on their head and saying where are they most meaningful in terms of region. So in some areas, they spent a lot more on seafood than they do on pork, for example. So those regions are hyper focusing on those particular commodities. Another area of goals that we had set a series of goals on And again, because of our climate work we're doing a little bit of a shift on is on our brand standards for the built environment I mentioned before, we want to design and help our owners build better buildings, more sustainable buildings in time. So looking at our design standards, our global design teams really trying to identify holistically how they modify those design standards, not to just meet a specific certification, but to really reduce the impact once that building is built irrelevant of the certification behind it. So that's a big area. Again, that's kind of shifting in time. Let's see. And, yeah, those are, those are the big ones.
Sean McMahon 30:37
I gotcha. So just follow up real quick on the renewable energy piece, how much onsite renewable energy does Marriott generate around the world? I assume you might have some solar panels and stuff at various locations. So what does that portfolio look like?
Denise Naguib 30:49
Yeah, we have hundreds, but it's a small percentage in the grand scheme of things. So we're just surpassed 2%, renewable electricity production across our portfolio on site. So yeah, we are doing a lot to drive that effort forward. We've just done an evaluation about 1300 hotels, to determine viability of more renewable TriCity on those hotels, you know, some hotels have a footprint where they can actually you know, add solar panels to their roof, or maybe their parking lots, etc. But even at the the best versions of that, you know, it is ultimately not enough to fuel an entire hotel. So while on site is absolutely a viable path for some of our electricity needs. We also need to look at other ways to drive renewables, again, using virtual approaches investments in large renewable projects where it makes makes most sense. But number one thing we can do reduce the energy that we use.
Sean McMahon 31:43
Yeah, I understood. Hope everyone believes that for sure. And then yeah, on the water, I'd never thought of what you said about the water in terms of during the pandemic, when there's, you know, relatively few guests, there's still all that water in the pool, there's still water, you know, water and a lot of them again, so the the math works out quite differently. So I'd never kind of thought of that.
Denise Naguib 32:03
Building I mean, why don't we use a lot of water to heat and cool the building, right. And so really thinking about the the water usage, I mean, just a really simple example, from a water innovation perspective, our cooling towers, you know, the air conditionings, you are important part of the the cooling factor of the building, our cooling towers have water in them. And that water without any support in terms of chemistry and understanding how that water is can be used, you would dump out equivalent of a swimming pools worth of water every day. And using chemistry and our partner Ecolab, we're able to understand the chemical makeup of the water after it's gone through a cycle, an increase what they call the cycles of concentration, really formal thing, but it's like how much use can you get out of that same amount of water. And so just by understanding the chemistry and making sure that it is balanced as much as possible, you can use that water three or four times. So think about that, like every single hotel that might be able to have that innovation, the reduction in water, just from the cooling is multiple swimming pools a day.
Sean McMahon 33:14
Wow. That's incredible. You mentioned earlier your science based targets, and you're working towards establishing those. A lot of listeners of this podcast have either done that, or they're maybe somewhere in the process of doing that. So what are some of the lessons you learned from that and you know, maybe any advice you have to people who might be somewhere along that path.
Denise Naguib 33:32
I think Lesson number one I would say is this takes a village, this is definitely not the work of a handful of people. This is going to require the best of us across all the different disciplines bringing their best mindset based on what they do best finance, legal operation and sustainability. Everybody working together, to understand the problem, to unpack how we can work together to solve the problem. And then to get our sleeves rolled up and start working, there is no way that we are going to meet the requirements, not of our companies, not over our industry, but of the planet if we don't work together. And so I think we absolutely have to understand this moment and understand that we cannot just keep it tight. We have to open the doors share as much as we can work together and talk to each other about when there are fail points, right? If you try something and it did not work, what better thing to do for a peer or a customer or a supplier than to say, hey, just as you're working on this journey, just so you know, this was a bump we ran into along the journey. And so I would say that the kind of the being open and honest and understanding is the village of mentality are two of the biggest points of view that I would say are good lessons learned. And we're learning them all the time. As I mentioned on the top of the conversation. I've been doing sustainability for almost 27 years. I I can tell you, I learned something every single day, every single day. So don't ever underestimate the power of continuous learning in this space, because nobody knows at all.
Sean McMahon 35:10
How much of those goals you think are gonna change? You know, obviously, you have some established already. But when you bring when you shift towards your science based targets, are you seeing some of those categories that we've been discussing? Where, hey, the goal you set was pretty bang on, like, where it's going to be now? Or some wasn't really that close? You know, like, are you anticipating many changes in your current goals?
Denise Naguib 35:31
Yeah, I mean, as we as we go into, towards our 2025, sort of sunset of our current goals, and we will be working towards establishing our new set of goals, whether it's the science based targets on our carbon efforts, or all of the other goals, both on the social and environmental side, we absolutely need to do a full evaluation when we did when we started this work in 2015. To set our current goals. We talked to a lot of people in and outside of the company to understand what matters to us. What is it that we can best influence in the world of sustainability, it's doing a sustainability materiality assessment to understand the impacts, just even identifying what categories we're going to try to drive responsible sourcing towards a, you know, was complicated. So I think, absolutely, we're going to take a much cleaner and different look, as we are in now in 2024, and 2025, as we look back, but also, as we think about the next five or 10 years, there's no way we could have predicted the pandemic, the situation that we you know, all came through in terms of the climate issues, there's no way that we had enough of a foresight of that in 2015, when we started this as we now will in 2025. And we'll go into the goals setting process. And we'll work through another set of goals that I hope are equal to, if not more ambitious, and really drive us into a direction that is a little scary on the unknown, but definitely towards the driving towards more sustainable company. So yeah, I think we will absolutely take a good look at all of the goals, again, those that we already sort of sailed past and those that we bumped along the way and didn't quite meet come 2025 I think we'll all be on the table for evaluation and understanding. Because at the end of the day, we want to make sure that we're continuously to move the needle, again, not just for our company, but for our sector and the business that we're in.
Sean McMahon 37:20
So one of my favorite questions, I like to ask all my guests, because, you know, one of the points of this shows we bring in folks from various different industries, right. So some of the things that they learned, they can share some of his very niche, and specifically what they do, but this is my favorite, what is the one challenge that you spend the most time thinking about?
Denise Naguib 37:40
I think, for me, I'm always intrigued, slash afraid about human behavior. What is it going to take to get you to do something different tomorrow than you did today? And so I think from a sustainability lens, we have to think about that there's no way we're going to be able to be successful. If everybody continues to do what they've always done, no way. But as we all know, human behavior and change is just so hard. So I think that's the one challenge that really gets me thinking all the time and trying to find different ways to approach it. You know, whether you have the person who's not believing in your cause, or what are the issues at hand, or that one who's totally bought in, but is trying to like, go too far too fast. I think both ends of that spectrum are really important to understand. And to figure out how do you actually get people to drive that change internally want to drive that change? Not just because they're being told they have to?
Sean McMahon 38:45
Oh, if you figure out that secret sauce, I'll have you back on the show, so you can share it.
Denise Naguib 38:51
You said challenge I wasn't gonna be light.
Sean McMahon 38:55
I got one more question. Do you have any bold predictions about where Marriott or perhaps the wider hospitality industry might be when it comes to sustainability in five or 10 years from now?
Denise Naguib 39:06
I'm kind of a realist. It's hard for me to be that futuristic. But in my you know, utopia, we would be not just Marriott, but the industry, designing and developing living buildings that all the energy that the US is produced by them. They manage all of their water that comes in so there's no net net no additional water used, that all of the waste is generated in the building is used to power that building to put compost and nutrient back on the plants that make that building live. That the air that is being breathed inside all those buildings is the best version of itself because it's being cleaned but all by all our great plants that we get to have on this planet and holistically that that Building, like I said, is just a living, breathing building, you know, the planet does so much for us. And how awesome would it be that we as humanity, are developing these buildings in a way and the ecosystem that we are generating in terms of our own business in a way that really is going to drive that meaningful change to the society that we all are part of and the planet that we are living on. As I always say sustainability is not about saving the planet, but saving ourselves. So at the end of the day, if we want to live on a healthy planet that's giving us good life, I think we need to think about what kind of environment that looks like around us.
Sean McMahon 40:39
Wow. Well, I gotta say, the idea of a living building is a great way to wrap up this conversation. Denise, thank you very much for your time. I really appreciate everything you've shared today.
Denise Naguib 40:48
Thank you so much Sean.
Sean McMahon 40:57
All right, everyone. Well, that's our show for today. Thank you all for listening. And if you haven't already, please subscribe or follow this show on Apple, Spotify, Google, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. And as always, please be sure to share it with your friends and colleagues. Have a great day.