Negresco Princess has embraced the concept of upcycling by incorporating glassware made from its own waste glass.

We are in a crucial decade for the environmental challenge. World leaders, local governments and individuals, companies and organisations, are all being called upon by the United Nations to drive the changes needed to tackle the climate crisis and meet the challenges of the 2030 Agenda.

Negresco Princess has developed several corporate social responsibility plans, as one of the main values that define the hotel group, which is very committed to the environment and its immediate surroundings. In this relentless pursuit of minimising their environmental impact, the hotel has introduced upcycling in the running of the Negresco Restaurant.

Upcycling is an exercise that takes recycling to a new level. Instead of sorting and decomposing waste to create new raw materials, upcycling uses the waste generated in the establishment as raw materials. These are then processed by skilled craftspeople to create objects with a new life in the Negresco Restaurant. The restaurant has teamed up with the Lucirmás studio in Montgat to recycle all the glass waste generated by the eatery. Lucía Bruni, founder of the studio, has been creating sublime fusions of design, craftsmanship and sustainability since 2006. The result is elegant, useful and sustainable pieces designed to be given a second life in new places.

Lucirmás has taken on the task of incorporating upcycling into the management of glass at the Negresco Restaurant, designing and creating glassware of different sizes for different uses, from small glass plates to food containers, decorative vases and even ashtrays. In Lucía Bruni’s studio, the sky is the limit!

According to Bruni, “upcycling allows us to create objects more efficiently than recycling, because our raw material is an existing object, and to transform it we don’t need any more raw materials and use less energy than if we started from scratch.” In addition, all the machines in her workshop have been adapted to reduce their environmental impact and improve their efficiency.

Jairo Mayolas, director of Negresco Princess, says: “We are a company that has always been committed to reducing the impact of our activities, so we can now announce that, in addition to reducing and recycling, we are also committed to reusing the waste glass we generate. In the creativity of Lucirmás we have found the best way to incorporate glass waste into our kitchenware, and we intend to review other elements such as paper, table linen or coffee to improve our waste management.”

In addition to the glassware, Lucirmás has designed an exclusive piece for Negresco: a serving platter for its famous brunch, made from recycled pallets. Not only has she designed the base, but the platter has a unique design adapted to its purpose, with grooves to match the size of the dishes it will hold.“We are going one step further with this platter. We want it to be a unique piece of sustainable design with a zero-waste philosophy,” says Mayolas.

Negresco Princess has been awarded the Biosphere Sustainable Lifestyle Seal. This certification is awarded by the Responsible Tourism Institute and recognises the sustainable efforts of destinations and businesses in meeting the requirements and principles of sustainability and continuous improvement to achieve the 2030 Agenda. The hotel will also soon receive the ISO 14001 certificate, which recognises its commitment to the environment. However, the restaurant’s efforts do not end there, as Mayolas explains: “The next steps we have in mind are the reuse of paper and table linen, as well as organic elements such as coffee grounds. We want to continue to grow in this direction. It’s part of our DNA and it’s where we want to go.”

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