Green Key is an international eco-label for tourism facilities. Since 1994, Green Key has been a leading standard of excellence in environmental responsibility and sustainable operation within the tourism industry. The Green Key program is run by the Foundation for Environmental Education. From March 2023 SOHO restaurant and hotel has Green Key certification. 

Applying for the certification was a logical step for us – since we are quite new establishment and from the start we have been doing smaller and bigger steps to act responsible towards environment. So applying for Green Key was next step towards our mission.

Come and open SOHO with green key!

Cleaning

When you stay with us over one night, we can skip everyday interim cleaning. This helps us save water, electricity, (ecolabel) fluids, etc.
We only do interim cleaning if you hang the “PLEASE CLEAN” sign on your door.

Trash and waste

We take recycling and reducing waste in SOHO very seriously. In addition to the regular recycling we also exchanged regular plastic bags from the hotel rooms to washable recycled bags. With this change we managed to reduce huge amount of plastic bags. All our food waste will find use as bio waste.

Electricity

Saving electricity is important, as we all have understood – electricity is very expensive, almost as luxury goods already. So, we have changed all our regular light bulbs to LED-lights and also measure the electricity consumption. However, our secret weapon is our Siim, who goes around and turns off all the lights that are not in use.

Paperless check-in

Forget about the long check-in process, waiting in lines and spending time in the hotel lobby with your luggage. Thanks to our good friend Hotelbuddy the guests can now check-in online, make all their activities before arrival and use their smartphone as a room key in SOHO.

No minibars!

You will not find minibars from SOHO rooms. The reason is, that we would like to avoid additional electricity consumption and production of small waste. When the guest feels hungry we have a lovely restaurant menu, where they can find snacks to share as well as lunch and dinner.

Reducing packaging

We have reduced package use as much as we could starting from tableware to one time hygiene products. We use dispensers instead of single use shampoos and shower gels in the hotel rooms. Also, rooms that have bath we have nice bath salts, which are in jars.

Plant based food

We are constantly working on increasing the options of plant based and vegan food to offer our guests healthy and wonderful dishes. In group menus we always take into consideration everyone’s food intolerance and diets and modify them accordingly. Only so everyone would be happy and full!

Invisible animals

Chicken in cages are held in tight conditions, where there is no possibility to spread their wings or see daylight. According to the law one bird in a cage must have only A4 paper sized area with a wire floor as a living place, which means that the welfare of chickens is very low. We have partnered up with Estonian organisation “Invisible animals” and SOHO restaurant does not use caged chickens in our dishes.

Local food

We are proud of our local food and producers and value them highly, which means we use local and fresh produce as much as possible. For example, we have great productions in Estonia in meat, milk and cheese industries, who deliver their produce to us. And, sour bread comes from our almost neighbours!