Sustainability has many facets at Kartause Ittingen.
Climate neutral stay - your contribution to climate protection
As part of the "Cause We Care" initiative, you have the opportunity to book your seminar CO2-neutral. We take over the compensation for you. The "Cause We Care" initiative of the Swiss foundation myclimate gives our guests the opportunity to promote climate protection locally and globally. By making a voluntary contribution, you, our valued guest, are making an active and effective contribution to climate protection.
fish farming with own spring water
How it works
Your contribution to climate protection: As part of the "Cause We Care" initiative, you offset the CO2 emissions of your stay with CHF 2 per room and night. Seminars and conferences can be offset with +1% of the event costs (corresponds to approx. CHF 1.50 per person/seminar day). For weddings and banquets we also apply the 1% surcharge compensation rule.
Your contribution is voluntary. Please let us know at the time of booking or at the latest on arrival if you do not wish to make the contribution to climate protection.
In return we double the contribution.
Part of the final sum (1/3) will be used to support high-quality international climate protection projects, so the service booked is climate-neutral. Myclimate selects and monitors these carbon offset projects. We invest the remaining amount (2/3) in local sustainability measures. In this way our guests achieve a double effect with their commitment.
We promise to offset all unavoidable CO2 emissions of your stay with myclimate carbon offset projects. This way you benefit from a climate-neutral stay and at the same time promote sustainable development, job creation, nature conservation and much more in places where it is particularly necessary. At the same time, we invest the same amount again in local sustainability programmes and thus reduce our own CO2 emissions and energy consumption. In this way we ensure that stays with us are even more climate-friendly and sustainable.
Our two current projects
We are currently investing your and our contribution in the following two projects:
- Part of the money will be used to renovate our historic roofs. During their renovation, defective roof tiles are replaced, intact ones cleaned and reused. In addition, the entire roof surface will be insulated, which will lead to considerable savings – including heating costs. You can find further information here.
- The remaining money will flow into an international project of myclimate. We have selected the project "Clean drinking water for schools and households through filter systems".
Roof renovation Kornschütte
Cause We Care contributions since the beginning of the project
year | Donated amount guests and Kartause Ittingen together in CHF |
2020 | 14'776 |
2021 | 34'744 |
2022 | 82'400 |
We are a member of Responsible Hotels of Switzerland
The hotel group Responsible Hotels of Switzerland, founded in 2022, consists of sustainable Swiss hotels that understand and live sustainability not only ecologically, but holistically, on the three pillars of ecology, economy and social issues. All the establishments of the Responsible Hotels of Switzerland take responsibility - each in its own individual way. They are independent, characterful establishments in beautiful locations and of high quality. Together, we want to offer guests with high standards of responsible travel a solution.
It makes us proud to be a founding member and flagship establishment of Kartause Ittingen and to be represented by our hotel director Valentin Bot as president. This drives us to become even more involved in this matter of the heart and to become better and better.
Seminar in the green
Quality control in the monastery garden
our happy free-range chickens
How we live sustainability in Kartause Ittingen – a few examples
- We wash and clean with detergents from the MayaLav-Line from Steinfels, which are particularly environmentally friendly. A dosing system controls the consumption.
- We change the linen in the guest rooms without special request once a week, i.e. every three days.
- In all ventilation systems, as well as in cooling units and rooms where there is a hot water supply nearby, we use heat recovery to preheat the boiler water. In this way we achieve 5-10°C.
- We produce about 10% of our electricity consumption (~120,000 kWh) with our own photovoltaic system.
- For our woodchip heating we use about 2'000 m3 of woodchips from regional wood every year. This corresponds to approximately 166'000 litres of heating oil, which we save.
- We use our own wood from the Ittingen forest, e.g. in the wood oven bakery, for barrels for the wine press, in the carpentry workshop (including for a large table, benches and fences on the grounds, for the production of wild bee hotels; nesting boxes and bird feeders) as well as for sales (in the monastery shop and to private individuals).
- We cook seasonally and use many products from our own farm. A dish made exclusively with ingredients from our own farm receives our "0 km stamp". Products that we do not produce ourselves, we source from local producers whenever possible. Our vegetable supplier looks for products for us within a 5-10 km radius.
- In agriculture, we avoid the use of fungicides and herbicides as far as possible. Further examples of sustainability on our farm can be found here.
- In summer the "Unteres Gästehaus" is cooled with spring water from the monastery's own spring. Afterwards the water continues to flow into our cattle shed. Afterwards, the water continues to flow into our cattle shed. The spring also feeds all the wells on the property as well as the trout farm.
- The irrigation in our nursery as well as in all gardens is done by meteor water from our pond.
- Together with the political municipality of Warth-Weiningen, we have successfully campaigned for there to be a Postbus connection with a stop directly in front of Kartause Ittingen. We recommend that our guests travel by public transport.
- The facility is car-free. Two high-power charging stations for electric cars are available in the car park.
- We train around 20 apprentices in nine professions. At the facility, you will encounter 50 occupational profiles.
- Three digitalisation projects have meant that we can largely do without paper internally.
- In our canteen, dormitory and administration we have water dispensers instead of PET bottles. In the "Oberes Gästehaus" we have removed the minibars and installed a central water and tea station.
- In recent years we have invested around CHF 100,000 annually in our own sustainability projects.