Terrace

Drinking (on)kruidenthee from Wilder Land (delicious herbal tea made from weeds), means directly contributing to the restoration of Dutch biodiversity. Sowing more weeds with local farmers means more bees, birds and butterflies will be returning to the Netherlands! Wilder Land is convinced we have to move towards an economy that is focused on restoration as we are currently still depleting the earth. Wilder Land wants to encourage Dutch biodiversity, and has discovered the versatile use of tea in the process!

Most herbal tea can be grown locally. However, most of the store-bought herbal teas are grown outside of the country, often outside of Europe! So why not start doing things locally? That means way less kilometers of transport, an improvement in Dutch nature, and a delicious tea in the process of it all. We call that a win-win-win!

Wilder Land shows us that high quality products and restoring nature go hand in hand.

What is better than a delicious piece of cake? A delicious piece of cake with a story! As a part of our green initiative, we prefer working with local products and entrepreneurs. That’s why all the cakes you find in our cafe are made by the sisters of Let’s Bake a Story. Just like Hotel de Plataan, Let’s Bake a Story strives to achieve quality, creativity and innovation. Iris and Isabelle work with the seasons, meaning that every season brings a new cake of the moment to our menu! Feeling like going for a classic? We always have their delicious apple pie and chocolate cake on our menu. There’s no doubting the freshness and quality of these cakes: the girls of Let’s Bake a Story make everything from scratch: from cremes to dough, no premade mixes are involved. That’s how we know everything we serve you is of the highest quality! Don’t believe us? Try a piece for yourself and find out!

Our own bees produce honey that you can buy in the hotel. In a good year, they can fill every space given to them with honey! The bee forage differs every year. The amount of rain, vermin, temperatures, and even the amount of attention are just a few of the many factors that influence the amount of honey produced.

As soon as the honey is ready for harvesting, the beekeeper uses a bit of smoke so that the bees stay away from the combs that need to be harvested. It is important to be careful and do it the right way as to not upset the colony. The harvested combs can be used for the honey. The honey can be eaten straight from the comb or put into a jar. A honeycomb with fresh honey is also available during breakfast at hotel de Plataan.

But how do you end up with liquid honey? The beekeeper gives the bees frames with artificial combs from beeswax. The bees build beeswax combs, fill the cells with honey and close them when the honey contains less than 18 percent water (ripe honey). To extract the honey, the lids of the cells are removed, keeping the rest intact. The honey frames are then put in a hand-powered or electrical centrifuge. The centrifuge extracts the honey on the bottom because the honey seeps out of the cells by the force of spinning. This is why this way of harvesting honey is also called ‘spinning honey’.

After all the frames are spun the honey can be filtered to remove possible leftover beeswax. After this the honey is ready to be jarred and labeled. Then they are stored in the hotel waiting to be sold. All of the proceeds of the honey sold at Hotel de Plataan goes to charity.

In Hotel de Plataan, all of the staff members work in work-clothing made from CO2 – neutral bio cotton. Six different quality labels can be found on the label of these t-shirts. But what do they all stand for?

The first label you can find on the Plataan t-shirts is the Global Organic Textile Standard Label, the certificate that indicates that the shirts are indeed made from biological cotton. The Fairtrade logo can also be found, an indication that the cotton of the t-shirts is produced under fair circumstances for the farmers and sold for a fair price.

Thirdly, the EU Ecolabel can be found on them. This label shows that the product is produced sustainably. This quality mark makes high demands for the lower usage of materials, energy, water and air. Furthermore, the SA8000 label stands for the international rights of humans. This quality mark checks if no child labour, forced labour or discrimination has taken place during the production.

The Neutral Responsibility label is a certificate that the clothing is made with energy from sustainable sources, such as wind or solar energy. Lastly, the Global Recycled Standard label can be found on clothing that consists of at least 50% recycled material. This label was originally founded for the clothing industry, but is nowadays used for a whole lot of products.

Hotel de Plataan is the greenest hotel in the Netherlands! We didn’t do just anything to achieve this status, and we work hard to maintain this title. That means separating our waste in 8 different ways, avoiding single use packaging wherever possible, giving any suitable organic waste from breakfast to our chickens, and having our own bees produce honey for us!

Making conscious decisions to sustainably run a hotel is usually done from an ideological point of view. We are aware of our duty to contribute to a better future. We’re doing this for our children, but appreciate the compliment of being crowned greenest hotel in the Netherlands, and are driven by this extra factor as well. 

Besides being green, we try to do our best to make the hotel and your stay with us the best it can be. Do you have an idea or a green initiative? Feel free to let us know by sending an e-mail or coming by our front desk. We are always open for new ideas to make the hotel greener and better!