Our Sustainability Commitment

We are a small budget hotel in a pilgrimage town, and we would rather be honest about the scale of what we do than claim more than is true. Sustainability at Bishnu Bhaban is not a marketing programme. It is a set of practical choices that reduce our running costs and our impact on the area around the temple.

Water is our most significant environmental concern, because we operate in Odisha where water availability varies sharply across the year. We have fitted low-flow showerheads and taps across all rooms, which reduces per-guest consumption substantially in a property where most guests take short showers and move on. Our linen and towel changes are made on a three-day cycle by default rather than daily, with fresh linen available on request at no charge. Our RO water treatment plant recovers and recirculates the reject stream instead of discarding it.

On energy, all lighting across the property is LED, and we use occupancy-based switching in corridors, stairwells, and other areas that are unoccupied for long stretches. Split air conditioning units in guest rooms are serviced on schedule, which is both the cheaper and the lower-emission option compared with replacing them prematurely. Solar hot water was considered but the capital cost and the maintenance burden for a property of our size did not justify it, and we would rather not claim a system we do not operate.

Waste handling follows the Odisha Pollution Control Board and Puri Municipality requirements for segregation at source. Wet waste from the kitchen is collected daily by the municipal contractor, and we store it in covered, sanitised bins to avoid the smell and flies that a poorly managed setup attracts near the temple. Dry waste is separated into recyclables and non-recyclables, and we avoid single-use plastic wherever a practical alternative exists, including in the packaged items we provide in rooms.

Water and waste management in a pilgrimage town are not purely environmental questions. Puri faces real pressure on its groundwater and its waste systems during festival season, when the population can multiply many times over in a few weeks. A property of our size contributes to that problem in proportion to its footprint, which is one of the reasons we have kept the room count modest rather than expanding into a larger building.