Sustainability
Fairmont Banff Springs, located in Canada’s first national park in Banff, Alberta, is committed to providing its guests with a luxurious yet mindful experience. The golf course and hotel grounds are both certified with Audubon International. Fairmont Banff Springs has had a continuous sustainability certification with Green Key Global since 2006, and obtained 5 keys rating in 2024, which is the highest score in our partner’s assessment.
As environmental stewards, our initiatives align with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals as outlined below, reflecting our commitment to global sustainability.
Learn more about Our Commitment to Sustainable Development, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
Fairmont Banff Springs was awarded the Zero Waste Trailblazers Award by the Town of Banff in 2020 for our environmental leadership in the destination. While very few recipes in the world are truly “zero waste,” our approach focuses on a scratch kitchen culture and a commitment to making the most of every ingredient.
With dedicated programs such as our bake shop, butcher shop, and saucier, we are able to maximize the value of ingredients our venues. In the butcher shop, usable beef trim is ground into burger meat, inedible trim is passed into our saucier program for stocks and jus, and fat is rendered into tallow. Vegetable trim often becomes the base for stocks or purees, citrus peel is turned into syrups or infusions, and bread is repurposed into crumbs or desserts. This philosophy carries across our kitchens: when by-products are created, they are redirected into other preparations wherever possible, ensuring the whole ingredient is respected and waste is minimized.
In addition, we use the Orbisk system, a software that tracks food waste in our kitchens, helping us measure, analyze, and continuously improve our practices over time. As of September 2025, we have managed to reduce our food waste by 55% compared to 2023 and we are continuing our efforts to maintain the trend and reach 60% reduction by 2030.
Our goal is not simply to chase “zero waste recipes,” but to build a culture of responsibility and creativity in which every ingredient is utilized to its fullest potential.
In collaboration with the town of Banff and Muuse Cups, our hotel is now part of the Banff Borrows Reusable Cup Program. In a 2023 Recycling Council of Alberta Waste Audit of public garbage bins in Banff, 18% of the waste was attributed to single-use cups. We have joined the program to be a part of the solution in reducing waste in our beautiful National Park.
The Banff Borrows Reusable Cup Program allows patrons to borrow a high-quality reusable cup free of charge from STOCK Food & Drink, located in our lobby. Participants will then have up to 30 days to return it to any partnering location. It’s as simple as scanning a QR code to register for the program, and you will join the effort to eliminate single-use waste while enjoying a delicious beverage from STOCK Food & Drink.
Sustainability is a key focus for Fairmont Banff Springs’ culinary team. Executive Chef Atticus Garant works diligently with local purveyors to bring in the highest quality ingredients and aims to have 75% of our products sourced from Alberta and other Canadian provinces. Moreover, as of 2025, 42% of our dishes are plant-based, helping shift our consumption towards more sustainable food. To go further, we have partnered with Foodsteps to accurately assess our ingredients’ environmental footprint – carbon, water and land.
Pastries, cured meats, and preserves are made onsite, with an in-house butcher shop providing fine cut, locally-sourced meat for the entire hotel. We grow microgreens in our urban cultivators at STOCK Food & Drink as well as house-grown herbs, greens and small vegetables in our greenhouse. The Castle is committed to purchasing local, organic, Fair Trade and sustainable food products wherever possible. For instance, we purchase our seafood aligned with Ocean Wise standards.
These efforts are to support regional agriculture and sustainable food production systems.
In partnership with Sun Country Highway Ltd., we have installed 8 electric vehicle charging stations in the parkade.
We provide free tickets for guests to use Banff’s local transit system, ROAM. Our team also provides opportunities to use shuttles to explore the area without a vehicle. This is to support Banff’s goals for sustainable road and transportation.
In 2022, Fairmont Banff Springs commissioned a deep energy & water audit at ASHRAE Level 2 standards. Following the audit, the hotel has received a list of suggested resources conservation measures, and these are being rolled out since then. Our building envelope dates back from 1888, so regular retrofits and upgrades are necessary to stay on par with sustainability standards.
Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel is proud to have some the cleanest drinking water in the entire world. The hotel’s water is sourced from a glacier-fed ground well in the national park, treated to the highest standards by the Town of Banff, and pumped to the property for guests and colleagues to enjoy. The hotel encourages guests to fill their reusable bottles with this pristine water at bottle refill stations or even straight from the tap in their room.
Fairmont Banff Springs has committed to mitigating harm to the precious local glacier water of Banff National Park by taking steps to reduce water consumption across the property. In addition to installing certified low flow plumbing fixtures in all guest rooms, and rolling out water awareness information to all staff, the largest water reductions have been seen on the iconic Fairmont Banff Springs Golf Course.
The golf course grounds team has re-naturalized 510,000 sq. ft. of areas near tee-off and fairways of all 27 holes by planting native montane grasses. In addition to immersing golfers in a more natural mountain landscape, the native vegetation does not require intense water & grooming, which allowed the hotel to decommission 115 sprinkler heads and save an astonishing 3.5 million gallons of water annually. The grounds team also performs frequent irrigation effectiveness audits to adjust distribution and identify equipment in need of repair.
Leftover soap & hygiene products that would otherwise be discarded from guest rooms are donated to Clean the World. A global organization that distributes recycled soaps and hygiene products to vulnerable communities in over 120 countries.
Plastic is a major issue in the hospitality industry. Accor acknowledged this issue and all properties are working to eliminate all 57 items from the GTPI list of single-use plastic items from the guest experience. All hotels are continuing to phase out single-use plastic items from internal operations until all properties are plastic-free by 2030.
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Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel performs an annual cleanup of the property and surrounding community to help preserve the beauty of Canada’s first national park, listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.
All new colleagues of Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel learn about current sustainability initiatives, the importance of environmental stewardship within the national parks, and how to contribute to their hotel’s sustainability goals. Each department has their role to play, and they have clear objectives to help achieve the hotel’s sustainability goals.
