Green Hotels

First of all, happy St. Patrick's Day! It's the greenest holiday since Earth Day! Say, do you think if we co-opted Earth Day into a drinking holiday it'd be more popular?

...I'm a little bit tired, as the opening paragraph's poor attempt at humor may suggest, so I'm going to try to keep this short and sweet. While trying to decide on a topic for this week, I checked out the link Elle Bee posted in her comment on the last post-- sure enough, dry cleaners popped up throughout my neighborhood, as did auto body shops and... hotels.

It makes sense, I suppose. Hotels are like hundreds of small apartments put together, but in which everything has to be washed, remade, scrubbed, cleaned, and changed daily. Cleaning chemicals and washing detergents are not good for the environment, and neither is the massive use of water and materials (soap, shampoo, conditioner, plastic for bottles, cardboard for boxes) that go along with such daily turnover. There are, however, things hotels can do to cut down their negative environmental impact. Before I list them, I'd just like to say that the Environmentally Friendly Hotels website is really useful and even has a hotel locater device, so you can be sure to stay at a green hotel during your next vacation.

Things hotels can do to be environmentally friendly:

1. Allow guests the option of re-using sheets and linens for multiple-day stays. Project Planet is one company that educates hotels on this issue and supplies signs to be placed in rooms encouraging patrons to re-use their linens. According to their website, every 100 guests who follow their program save 450 gallons of water and 3 gallons of detergent per day.

2. Use environmentally friendly cleaning products (I'd elaborate, but I think this is perhaps a topic which deserves it's own post).

3. Use packaging which is recycled and/or recyclable.

4. Become involved in programs like Good Earthkeeping, Energy Star, Water Wise, and Waste Wise.

5. Maintain active recycling programs.

6. Appoint an employee to be the point person for environmental issues at the hotel, and train all staff on environmental practices.

7. Purchase higher efficiency models of equipment needed to run the hotel (computers, monitors, copy machines, printers, etc.)

8. Turn off lights when not needed and remove unnecessary fixtures, or have auto shutoffs/occupancy sensors for lights in areas of sporadic use, including exterior lights

9. Landscape with drought tolerant plants, and use sprinkler timers to water between 6:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. to avoid excessive evaporation

10. Reuse cutlery, linens or glassware for rooms and room service instead of plastics.

11. Copy or print on both sides of the paper. Use recycled paper and soy-based inks.

12. Offer newspapers to guests only upon request.

13. Subsidize employee public transportation costs, or organize employee carpooling systems.

14. Use water-efficient faucets, toilets, showers, and washing machines.

Thanks to this website