Therme Group, the University of Surrey and Innovate UK have launched the world's first carbon footprint tool for the spa and wellness industry.
The peer-reviewed calculator (SPA-DEC in Nature Communications Sustainability) was validated in a large wellness resort and a smaller sports park.
It is the first standardised method for calculating the carbon footprint of an individual spa or wellness visit in real time, giving operators of any size a way to measure, benchmark and reduce emissions.
The tool is ready to use, making spa and wellness one of the first sectors of the visitor economy to have an industry-ready, science-based carbon metric.
Industry-ready carbon footprint tool
“Our SPA-DEC is a world-first," said Robert Hanea, founder and CEO of Therme Group.
"The wellness industry has now a carbon footprint calculator of its own: peer-reviewed, real-time, bottom-up and dynamic, going beyond anything that existed before, and the methodology for a true carbon intelligence tool.
"It empowers spas, wellness centers and even theme and amusement parks, small and large alike, to manage carbon as an asset and build agile sustainability strategies, factoring carbon into daily operations.”
Therme Group is developing new wellness destinations in the UK, Germany, Canada, the US, South Korea, Dubai and Singapore
Professor Jhuma Sadhukhan of the University of Surrey's centre for environment and sustainability said: "Life cycle assessment is a fundamental tool for engineering systems design and decision-making.
"However, a spa visit’s life cycle assessment does not follow the standard approach and needed out-of-box thinking.
"Working out how to divide a whole building’s emissions fairly, including some of them in real time, between the people using it is what makes this work significant and real-world application-oriented, as it can be adopted to a wide range of facilities in the tourism sector to assess and mitigate emissions."
Therme Group is currently expanding, developing new wellness destinations in the UK, Germany, Canada, the US, South Korea, Dubai and Singapore.
Images courtesy of Therme Group
