EcoGreenHotel

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has sponsored the first national energy efficiency contest – a “Biggest Loser” competition to see which commercial building can shed the most energy waste and be declared the most efficient in the country.

The EPA is keeping tabs on 14 final contestants until August 31st, among which are two hotels. They include the Courtyard Marriott San Diego Downtown and the Sheraton Austin Hotel. The 14 buildings also include schools, college dorms, hotels, department stores, a mall, a healthcare center and office buildings. They were selected as finalists from a pool of 200 participants.

EPA’s National Building Competition’s 14 finalists will be judged on their energy performance from September 1, 2009 to August 31, 2010. The energy use of each building is being monitored with EPA’s Energy Star online energy measurement and tracking tool, ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager. Television personality Bob Harper will provide energy fitness tips for the contestants through a series of videos that will be available on the contest website. The winner will be declared at EPA’s final weigh-in on October 26, 2010.

The Courtyard by Marriott San Diego Downtown is managed by Denver-based Sage Hospitality Resources. Located in the Gaslamp Quarter, the Courtyard by Marriott San Diego Downtown is housed in one of the city’s most prominent landmark buildings, the historic San Diego Trust & Savings Bank. The hotel, which currently has an Energy Star rating of 63, plans to win the competition by making key operational changes, including the installation of water restricting devices, motion sensing lighting controls in stairwells and the replacement of all incandescent bulbs with CFL bulbs.

Energy Star Challenge

“We are thrilled and honored to be a part of the EPA National Building Competition,” said Jody Blackinton, general manager of the hotel. “There are definitely unique challenges to improving the energy efficiency of a historic property like this and we look forward to seeing how we measure up against other buildings across the nation.”

“Sustainability is good business, plain and simple,” said Chris Alto, the Sheraton’s general manager. “Not only does it help global efforts to make the planet a cleaner place to live, but it also creates meaningful cost reductions for our bottom line. HEI Hotels & Resorts has been a leading proponent of ‘green initiatives’ for some time now, as evidenced by being named a 2010 Energy Star Partner of the Year. Our goal is to continue this mission.”

“Buildings of all shapes and sizes are saving money and energy with help from EPA and Energy Star,” said Jean Lupinacci, director of EPA’s Energy Star Commercial Buildings Program. “We applaud the contestants of EPA’s National Building Competition for taking action to protect the environment and fight climate change.”

In addition to showcasing contestants’ efforts toward energy efficiency, the competition is intended to put the Energy Star program in the spotlight. More than 17,000 companies, schools, colleges, hospitals, municipalities, utilities and other organizations participate in the program.

According to the U.S. Green Building Council, buildings in the United States account for 72 percent of electricity consumption, 39 percent of energy use and 38 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions.

Commercial buildings are responsible for 17 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions at a cost of more than $100 billion per year, says the EPA, which estimates that on average 30 percent of the energy used in commercial buildings is wasted.

“It’s time for buildings to tighten their belts and we’re happy to help them go on an energy diet,” said Gina McCarthy, the EPA’s assistant administrator for air and radiation.

We, at EcoGreenHotel, know the challenges involved to become both an energy efficient and green hotel. Therefore, we’re rooting for both the Courtyard Marriott San Diego Downtown and the Sheraton Austin Hotel and wish them good luck!

It seems sustainability options have finally come to the mainstream for trade shows and conventions. In recent years green practices have been adopted by convention centers, event planners, vendors and contractors to dramatically reduce costs and their environmental impact.

As the 2010 Waste Expo kicks off this week in Atlanta, EcoGreenHotel takes a look at the solid waste and environmental impacts of Trade Shows. WasteExpo is North America’s largest solid waste and recycling tradeshow serving both the private and public sectors. The show boasts “green” initiatives such as: extensive use of electronic media to eliminate paper, energy saving lighting, green cleaners, carpet made from recycled materials, and of course robust recycling programs.

It is held at the Georgia World Congress Center Authority in Atlanta which has recently adopted sustainability practices for its 3.9million square feet of space. Beyond the standard green building practices, the center works closely with a local Food Bank to ensure left over food and supplies from events do not go to waste. Plastic water bottles have been replaced with spring water coolers and food wastes are composted onsite.

But are these initiatives enough to create a sustainable trade show?

The most sustainable trade show is the recent advent of the virtual trade show. As the name implies, a virtual trade show is conducted online for all of the attendees and exhibitors in a virtual convention center. The nearly zero carbon footprint shows offer live speakers, interactive vendor booths, networking events, and opportunities to sample products and services. In today’s economy the time and cost savings alone make this option immensely more attractive than traditional shows. EcoGreenHotel likes the idea of the virtual trade show so much it has committed to attend the Spa Hospitality Expo on May 26 and 27. Please join us in our booth for your first virtual tradeshow experience. You can register for the free show at http://tiny.cc/dq4sh

Hotels can make a significant impact on waste reduction and recycling. A waste audit conducted in six properties by the Florida Energy Extension Service indicated that waste generation in guest rooms varied from 1/2 to 28 1/2 pounds of waste per day. One hotel in their pilot proje ct saved about 1.25 billion BTU of energy in six months by recycling. This reduction in energy use (which is 125,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity) is the same as energy consumed by 1,250 100-watt light bulbs burning continuously for 42-days. Imagine the savings!!

Let’s get started! Follow these eight steps to create your hotel’s recycling program – you won’t regret it, trust us!

1. Select a Recycling Coordinator

Accountability is key to the success of your green hotel’s recycling program. Who is going to be at the forefront of this effort? This is especially true at the beginning. Finding the right person to head this up is crucial. The ideal recycling coordinator will be:

• Enthusiastic about recycling and/or the environment
• Well organized
• A good communicator
• Familiar with starting, overseeing and maintaining programs
• In contact with the company’s waste haulers, janitorial staff or contracts

How much time does this position take? Well, that really depends on your employee’s participation. One hour per month is usually enough to maintain a successful hotel recycling program. Ask for volunteers, and we bet you’ll find a great candidate quickly.

2. Decide What to Collect

Consider that paper makes up an average of 37.5 percent of the waste stream. What else does your hotel use? What supplies do you have on hand? What do your guests and employees use? Take a walk around and start making a list.

Here are a few possibilities:

• Computer paper
• Aluminum cans
• Bathroom amenities
• Batteries
• Light bulbs
• Computers and accessories
• Glass bottles
• Inkjet/toner cartridges
• Plastic bottles
• Scrap metal
• Paper or plastic cups

3. Choose a Collection Method
To mix or not to mix? That is the question to ask. Now that you know which materials you are going to recycle, how do you collect them? Does everything have to be separated or can it all be thrown in the same bin? Your hotel can do either. Here are the pros and cons of each option:

Source Separation Recyclables are separated by specific type. Examples:

• Paper recycling would have many bins including: white paper, colored paper, cardboard, office mail, magazines/catalogs, etc.
• Plastic recycling would have bins for each type of plastic: #1-7

Pros:

• Bin items are extremely specific, with fewer questions as to what goes where
• Separated materials can have a higher market value
• It creates more environmental awareness for both guests and employees

Cons:

• It requires more recycling bins (and a higher setup cost)
• Your recycling coordinator may have to spend time sorting materials
• You may have to find multiple destinations for recyclables if they are source-separated
• Too many recycling containers in your guest rooms

Commingled Collection Recyclables are mixed together. The separation process happens at a material recovery facility. Examples:

• Paper recycling has one bin to collect all paper
• Plastic recycling has one bin to collect plastics #1-7 together

Pros:

• It is less time-consuming for employees
• It usually involves larger participating groups
• The recycling coordinator will have less time invested

Cons:

• Market values may be lower (e.g. mixed office paper may lower the value of computer paper if both are combined)
• Materials may be contaminated more easily if commingled
• Less opportunity for guest and employee education about recycling

4. Choose a Hauling Option
You know what materials you are recycling. You’ve determined your method of collection. You’ve got full recycling bins. Now how do you get rid of it?

Determining how to haul your green-conscious hotel’s recyclables away can be one of the greatest challenges. You should be realistic in planning how much your business is capable of recycling. The following are the most common hauling options available to most businesses:

Drop-Off Recycling Locations
Once you’ve collected all the recyclables from guest rooms, common area, back of house and the office, your recycling coordinator, or another volunteer, can drop off materials at a local center.

Earth911.com’s recycling locator will help your business find nearby drop-off locations. You can also see what your local Materials Recovery Facility will accept from businesses.

Things to consider when choosing a municipal or commercial drop-off center include:

• Recyclables accepted
• Contamination guidelines
• Minimum quantity requirements
• Prices per recyclable
• Hours of operation
• Payment options

Money earned from selling recyclables can be used to reimburse your recycling coordinator. Or, to create a fund for hotel events and parties for your dedicated hotel staff. Pick-Up Providers
Pick-up services will often require a higher quantity of recyclables that your hotel alone generates. If your green hotel can produce the amount of recyclables required for a service such as this, here is some information on how to find the right pick-up provider for your hotel:

Commercial Recyclers
Commercial recyclers are often more suited for businesses generating larger volumes of recyclables. Pick-up or hauling fees may apply. They may offer other services including waste hauling, collection bins, educational materials and/or employee training.

Commercial Waste Haulers Commercial waste haulers wanting to provide a “complete package” to their customers have started to offer recycling services, because they are able to make up their lost waste hauling fees with recycling revenue.

Commercial waste haulers may have volume and contamination requirements, pick-up fees and other requirements.

You may be able to reduce your overall waste hauling expense, and only have to deal with one company, for solid waste and recycling.

Small Haulers
Don’t meet the required volume of a commercial recycler or waste hauler? Small haulers may work for you. These companies are usually considered “mom and pop” shops. They run smaller routes with fewer trucks, employees and equipment.

Larger commercial recycling companies and waste haulers will usually recommend smaller haulers because they buy the recyclables directly from the smaller haulers.

Small haulers may also have volume and contamination requirements and pick-up fees.

Cooperative Recycling Your hotel only generates a small volume of recyclables. What can you do?

1. Partner with neighboring businesses
2. “Piggyback” onto a larger business’ recycling program

By pooling your recyclables, you can qualify for pick-up by a commercial recycler or waste hauler. Cooperative recycling is popular in multi-tenant buildings or complexes, strip malls and industrial parks. Cooperative recycling also makes it easy for recyclers to coordinate pick-ups more effectively.

If you get involved with a larger company, you win because you are able to recycle at no additional expense. The larger business wins by receiving additional volume and extra revenue.

The drawbacks?

• You may have limitations on the types of products your can recycle.
• The larger business may be penalized for any contaminated products that you send.

Back Hauling
Is your hotel in a rural location? You may have difficulty finding a recycling source. Consider back hauling (or secondhand hauling).

For instance, a grocery store could request that its delivery truck backhaul recyclables to a larger metropolitan market if the truck was empty on the return trip anyway.

Back hauling may be more challenging to find, and it’s only ideal for businesses that receive deliveries in the first place. But it’s better than not recycling your materials at all.

5. Set Up Recycling Bins and Guidelines
Organization is crucial to recycling. No matter what type of recycling program you implement, you’ll want to set up clearly-labeled plastic bins in places everyone will use them. Some good locations:

• A paper recycling bin and/or ink cartridge recycling bin in the copy room
• Aluminum/glass/plastic recycling bins in the kitchen and breakfast area
• A mixed recycling bin in all guest rooms
• An electronics recycling bin in the storage room

Another issue to consider for your recycling program is contamination. Materials that are contaminated won’t be recycled and could ruin larger batches of recycling. Luckily, contamination can easily be avoided by following these steps:

1. Rinse out containers, so bins won’t get dirty
2. Make sure there’s no food waste mixed in with recyclables (e.g. cardboard pizza box with oil remains) and that materials aren’t mixed (e.g. aluminum cans mixed with paper) if your recycler requires separation
3. When in doubt, throw it out

Now it is time to implement your hotel’s earth friendly recycling program, and there are several factors to consider, including:

Internal Collection Container Locations
Your program will only be as effective as how easy it is for guest and employees to participate. Bin quantity and location plays a huge role in this. Here are a few options:

Desk Side or Desktop Containers
Everyone goes through paper. By placing a paper recycling bin next to the trash at each employee’s and guest room’s desk, it will become second nature for them to recycle paper. You can find a range of different styles on EcoGreenHotelStore.com

Central Collection Containers
These containers are for hotel common areas, and should be placed strategically in areas where products will be collected. An office copy room is an ideal area for a paper collection container, just like the kitchen would cater (no pun intended) to aluminum and glass recycling. Common sizes for central containers are 20- to 50-gallon plastic bins.

Final Collection Containers
These are often provided by the recycling service provider and serve as a final destination for all your recyclables before they are picked up or dropped off. Products from guest rooms, office and central collection bins will be unloaded into these large bins, which are usually hampers on rollers or plastic barrels with lids and wheels.

6. Monitor Your Program
Once your hotel’s recycling program is in place, monitor its progress to evaluate cost-effectiveness, employee participation and environmental impact.

Provide Feedback to Employees
Share the success, progress and problems with your hotel’s program periodically with guests and employees. Here’s how:

• Use company-wide e-mails to distribute updates or milestones about the program
• Inform staff of certain contaminants or individuals/departments with strong participation
• Publicize to guests the quantity your company recycles and revenues over a certain period (month, quarter, year); your hauling company will be able to provide this information
• Calculate/distribute disposal cost savings based on the decrease of waste
• Survey employees/guests/departments to identify program problems and improvements
• Post informative articles on recycling, source reduction, reuse and/or the environment to further educate hotel staff
• Include information on recycling program participation in the new employee orientation and/or handbook
• Show how successful and creative your program is by promoting your hotel’s efforts outside the business through green internet marketing
• Consider applying for various local, state or federal awards, such as the American Forest & Paper Association’s Paper Recycling Awards
• Become an EPA WasteWise business to further improve your program
• Get involved in local, state and/or national recycling and environmental or industry-related organizations.
• Distribute press releases on your green hotel’s program and accomplishments. Submit your press release to EcoGreenHotel and contact us to see how you can be featured in our distributions as well as social media-marketing program.

7. Promote Your Program Through Education
Proper staff education is crucial to the success of your hotel’s recycling program. Here are some tips:

1. Education should start before your recycling program, so employees know what to recycle
2. Introduce your staff and housekeeping staff to the program in writing, such as an introductory memo, and at a staff meeting
3. If you are using a recycling pickup service provider, ask about employee education and training
4. Explain how recyclables are collected, what is recyclable, how the program will benefit the environment and the company, as well as other waste reduction and reuse measures that will be implemented
5. Show samples of recyclables and non-recyclable materials (contamination) on a board or sign near recycling containers

Recycling Signage
Create your own container and recycling signs:

• Recycle Cardboard
• Recycle Glass
• Recycle Inkjet Cartridges
• Recycle Paper
• Recycle Plastic
• Recycle Toner Cartridges
• Do NOT Recycle! Contaminants

8. The Role of the Housekeeping Staff
Housekeeping staff needs to be aware of the program since they will be collecting recyclables from each guest room. They need to be aware of the program to prevent unintentional contamination. Here are a few questions to consider:

• How will the recyclables be store in the cart separate from trash?
• How much time does this collection process add to cleaning each guest room?
• How does this impact the overall housekeeping schedule?
• What is the disposal process once collected by your housekeeping staff?

We’ve looked backwards and forwards with our last two book recommendations. Now that we have the foundation set lets take a look at “now.” How to create a company that not only sustains, but surpasses the norm and is an all-around “good” steward – truly.

Seventh Generation’s Jeffrey Hollender and Bill Breen have co-authored a fun read. It serves as a blue print for creating a socially responsible business in this new age. This is Hollender’s push for more responsibility—of the ‘bigger’ kind. Whether you are an owner, leader, executive, general manager, junior employee or staff – this book will show you can green your practices and still make a profit.

Programs both by the government and more so by businesses have been created to bring about the social and environmental change needed in the world and the workplace. Is it really enough?

Using stories and principles from companies who are doing interesting and radical things (Linden Labs, Timberland, Etsy – to name a few), Hollender gives us ideas and methods for sustainable social responsibility. He makes a clear case for Community and Collaboration.

Two points to note are:

1. It’s a competitive advantage for your hotel to be seriously responsible (both as resources dwindle and traveler/guests demand more); and
2. “Sustainability” includes social initiatives. It starts with being green, supply chains and energy efficiency – but there is definitely more to it.

Whether you call it ‘People, Planet, Profit’ or ‘Tripple Bottom Line,’ Profits will follow when we make responsible decisions. We at EcoGreenHotel definitely believe and know the impact of that. This book will get your started, or take you further – either way, you win!

Last month we introduced this new GREEN TEAMS series and briefly focused on green teams and the business value. This month, before we go further into the “how” we will be taking a look at “why” first.

One of the key challenges consistenty raised as more and more hotels “go green” is making the business case for investing resources to support green teams. Does it make sense? Businesses in all areas including hotels are just beginning to quantify the benefits from green teams, therefore at this point, the business case is more intuitive and anecdotal in nature.

Based on a review of case studies and interviews with green team leaders, the business value of green teams includes the following:

Cost Savings
Carrie Freeman, a Corporate Sustainability Stretegist at Intel, commented, “When it comes to looking at ways to reduce our footprint, we very much see a direct coorelation between reducing our costs and engaging our employees.” Be it changing light bulbs, turning off the lights or getting your employees to innovate greener solutions in their jobs, engaging your employees to identify easy, low cost efficiency initiatives can result in significant cost savings. For example, Intercontinental Hotels invested $400,000 to change light bulbs on their properties and saved $1.2 million over four months.

Attract & Retain Best Talent
A green team, when part of a broader sustainability strategy, can give employees an outlet for their personal interests, help raise moral, improve loyalty and help attract and retain the best and brightest talent, who are attracted to companies with an authentic green commitment. Losing and replacing a good employee costs companies between 70% to 20% of an employee’s annual salary, according to Engaged!, a new book on employee engagement. And when the economy begins to heat up, the best talent may be looking for greener pastures. Libby Reder, Head of Environmental Initiatives at eBay, believes their Green Team is an important reason why some employees stay at eBay, and according to their recruiters, it also helps them attract the best talent.

Strengthen Brand & Increase Market Share
Hotels can bolster their brand and potentially increase market share by walking the talk and supporting green teams as a strategy for getting their employees and guests behind sustainability. They can also use employees to identify new opportunities to improve their practices and achieve their sustainability goals. “The engaged workforce will find more opportunities to get lean and identify more opportunities to innovate and create products and services that lower customers’ environmental impacts. All of this work will improve the top and bottom lines,” comments sustainable business expert Andrew Winston, in his recent book Green Recovery.

The National Environmental Education Foundation’s (NEEF) recent report The Engaged Organization Corporate Employee Environmental Education Survey and Case Study Findings stresses, “By engaging employees, companies spark innovative changes in everyday business processes that save money and reduce environmental and social impacts while also inspiring employees to make sustainable choices at home and in their communities.”

A good start to your hotel’s green waste management initiatives is by first quantifying where you are right now. Without knowing your starting point, you won’t be able to know the impact of your green initiatives.

The Excel Food Waste Management Calculator | The Food Waste Management Calculator (PDF) (13 pp, 97K, about PDF) estimates the cost competitiveness of alternatives to food waste disposal, including source reduction, donation, composting, and recycling of yellow grease. Specifically, the calculator:

• Develops an alternative food waste management scenario based on:
• Your waste profile;
• Availability of diversion methods; and
• Preferences, and
• Compares cost estimates for a disposal versus an alternative scenario.

The Calculator demonstrates that environmentally and socially responsible food waste management is cost-effective for many facilities, including hotels, and waste streams. The more you know about your current waste management costs, the more accurate the calculator’s estimate will be, but default values are provided for many variables.