Abstract
Spa and wellness centres constitute a fundamental aspect of contemporary health and lifestyle infrastructure, yet their environmental impacts remain under-assessed. This study presents a dynamic emissions calculator tailored to spa and wellness facilities, designed to generate transparent per-visitor emissions and support decarbonisation and benchmarking. By combining metered data such as energy and water with normalised non-metered sources including waste and staff travel, the model quantifies per-visitor emissions across Scopes 1, 2, and 3 and provides time-resolved profiles showing daily and seasonal patterns. Validation uses data from a large wellness resort and a small university sports park wellness zone. The results show that a typical visit results in average emissions of 5 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent at the large facility and 3.5 kilograms at the small facility, with on-site renewable energy in 2024 reducing emissions by 33% and 14% respectively.
SPA-DEC is a dynamic carbon calculator that translates a facility’s metered energy and water use, together with waste and other operational sources, into the footprint of a single spa or wellness visit. Across two case-study facilities in 2024 it found typical visits of about 3.5 to 5 kilograms carbon dioxide equivalent, with on-site renewables reducing per-visit emissions by roughly 14 to 33%