Turning Sustainability Commitment into Measurable Impact
The Background
Miami Beach, Florida | 247 Rooms | 4 Green Keys
Located on Miami Beach, The Palms Hotel & Spa is a 247-room, family-owned oceanfront resort with a history dating back to 1940. Today, the property combines its Art Deco heritage with an eco-luxury approach centred on sustainability, wellness and responsible hospitality.
Since 2010, sustainability has been embedded into the hotel’s operations and guest experience through its “Inspired by Nature” philosophy. The Palms has made sustainability a property-wide priority, from energy and water conservation to waste reduction, local sourcing, community engagement and guest education.
The property is also a 4-Key certified hotel, demonstrating its commitment to measuring and continuously improving its sustainability performance.
Green Key Global offers a credible, hospitality-focused framework that helps hotels build meaningful, measurable sustainability programs while improving operational efficiency and guest trust.
The Challenge
As an oceanfront hotel operating in a sensitive coastal environment, The Palms recognized the need to reduce its environmental footprint while maintaining the service, comfort, and experience expected of a luxury resort.
The team identified several priorities:
- Reduce waste and dependence on single-use plastics
- Increase recycling and composting
- Improve energy and water efficiency
- Strengthen sustainable food and beverage practices
- Engage employees and guests in sustainability
- Support local environmental and community initiatives
- Establish a measurable framework for continuous improvement
The challenge was not simply doing more. It was creating a structured, measurable approach that could bring sustainability together across departments and demonstrate meaningful progress to guests, employees, and business partners.
Sustainability is not a trend for us; it is one of the foundational pillars of our identity and operations and has been engrained in our culture since 2010.
The Solution
The Palms chose Green Key Global to help formalize and strengthen its sustainability strategy.
Green Key’s hospitality-specific framework provided the property with a practical structure to evaluate its existing practices, identify opportunities for improvement and create greater accountability across the organization.
Green Key Global’s program is hospitality-specific, practical, measurable, and operationally focused.
The Impact
The Palms’ sustainability strategy is producing measurable environmental, operational, and community outcomes.
- Waste & Circularity: The Palms has made significant progress in diverting waste from landfill. Its composting program has diverted more than 136,000 pounds of waste since November 2024. The hotel has also diverted more than 28,000glass bottles since April 2025 and significantly reduced its use of single-use plastics.
- Energy & Water Efficiency: Sustainability is integrated into the property’s engineering operations, including:
- 95% LED lighting throughout the property
- In-room energy management systems
- 94 eco-toilets incorporating greywater reuse systems
- Slow-flow showers, sinks and toilets throughout the property
- Community & Conservation: The Palms has hosted bi-annual community beach cleanups since 2010, engaging more than 1,500 volunteers and removing approximately 4,000 pounds of marine and coastal debris.
Through its “Do Good, Feel Good” rooms package, the hotel has also generated more than $27,000 for local environmental nonprofits since 2023. - Sustainable Food & Beverage: At Essensia Restaurant & Bar, the property incorporates local and sustainable sourcing into its farm-to-table approach.
The team also replaced disposable tasting spoons with reusable alternatives, eliminating approximately 100,000 disposable spoons annually. - Engaging The Team: Sustainability extends beyond operational initiatives. The Palms created a cross-functional Green Team and its “Think Green” employee program to build awareness and participation across departments.
Employees participate in sustainability initiatives ranging from beach cleanups to community programs and in-house collection of recyclables and reusables, helping make sustainability part of the property’s culture. - Business & Operational Impact: The hotel’s sustainability initiatives have also contributed to:
- Reduced purchasing and waste-hauling costs
- Improved energy and water efficiency
- Increased guest awareness and loyalty
- Greater visibility through sustainability-focused media and partnerships
- Increased interest from sustainability-minded corporate and group clients
Most importantly, Green Key Global helped The Palms move from individual sustainability initiatives toward a more structured, measurable and credible sustainability strategy.
The program helped us improve operational efficiencies, increase team member awareness, strengthen our sustainability messaging, and reinforce our market positioning as a leader in eco-luxury hospitality.
Key Takeaways
- Sustainability works best when it becomes part of the operation: The Palms demonstrates that meaningful sustainability does not require sacrificing the luxury guest experience. By embedding sustainability across engineering, housekeeping, food & beverage, the spa, marketing and employee engagement, the property has made environmental responsibility part of how it operates
- Measurement creates momentum: From pounds of waste diverted to bottles eliminated and community members engaged, measurable outcomes help demonstrate progress, identify opportunities and keep teams accountable.
- Certification creates credibility: Green Key Global provided The Palms with a hospitality-specific framework to formalize its sustainability strategy, identify new opportunities and strengthen the credibility of its initiatives with guests, clients and partners
The Journey Continues
The Palms is continuing to advance its sustainability strategy, with future priorities including further reducing single-use plastics, expanding composting and recycling, improving carbon tracking, exploring water and irrigation efficiencies, increasing local sourcing, and expanding guest and employee education.
It helped us formalize our sustainability strategy, identify new opportunities, and strengthen the credibility of our initiatives with guests, clients, and partners.