EcoGreenHotel

Organic cotton to bamboo, these are the threads you should know about.

When it comes to purchasing your linens, you have the power to make a difference. It’s up to us,consumers including green hotel purchasers, to buy from companies that will create a shift in the market for our environment and long-term health.

You should know that not only are chemicals in the foods that we eat, but they are also found in our upholsteries, blankets, bed sheets and clothes. More and more, people are experiencing health problems such as rashes, allergies, respiratory and concentration problems due to chemical sensitivities. This adds to the growing demand of “green” hotel guest rooms.

So what makes fabric “eco-friendly”? Wikipedia defines eco-friendly (as well as environmentally friendly, nature friendly and green) to be used to refer to goods and services, laws, guidelines and policies considered to inflict minimal to no harm to the environment.

“Green” fabrics, for the most part, include any fabric made from sustainable or organic natural materials using fewer chemicals, sustainable operations and environmentally supportive manufacturing methods. Green fabric is also used to describe recycled fabric.

Lets focus on the following four eco-friendly fabrics. Keep in mind, these aren’t the only eco-friendly fabrics available – we’ve chosen these to start with.

1–Organic cotton: is weaved from non-genetically modified plants. It is certified as grown without the use of any synthetic agricultural chemicals, such as fertilizers or pesticides. It doesn’t damage the quality of the cotton or the land and surrounding ecology.

2– Organic linen with flax fibers: True organic linen is created with flax fibers. It comes in the color of a natural cream or light tan since pure white is only achieved through bleaching. Although it wrinkles easily, it is a great hot-weather fabric because it absorbs moisture without getting damp, thus drying quickly and cooling the skin. If you accept the wrinkle look charm, keep in mind flax fiber is stronger than cotton fiber and is less elastic.

3–Hemp: Ok, so it’s still illegal to grow hemp in the Unities States due to its association with marijuana. However, legislation is in the works to change. Right now it’s grown elsewhere in the world and, unfortunately, this increases it’s carbon footprint. Nonetheless, hemp products are manufactured in the U.S.

As for the hemp itself, it’s grown easily and is environmentally friendly. The fibers are mildew-resistant, antimicrobial, UV protecting and even fire proof. This makes it an ideal candidate for fabrics that get a lot of use, but it isn’t the softest option around.

4–Soy: It’s softer than cotton, much more durable, warm, absorbent, and lightweight. Made out of discarded tofu, it’s considered the ultimate sustainable fiber and sometimes referred to as “vegetarian cashmere” – “cashmere” due to its softness and luxurious appeal.

So how do you make fiber out of tofu, you ask? Well, leftovers from tofu manufacturing are gathered, liquefied, and extruded through spinnerets to create filaments that are spun into fine yarns. (Fun fact: Henry Ford first investigated the use of soy in textiles for his automobile in the 1940’s, but the arrival of synthetics on the scene stole the show – however it’s now being rediscovered).

Side note: There is much controversy around the use of bamboo for fabrics and products. Therefore, keep an eye out for EcoGreenHotel’sbamboo pros and cons article to help hotel operators make a well-informed decision.

Our GREEN TEAM series is coming to a close soon. We’ve covered numerous topics on how to engage your employees in sustainability, now we’ll take a look at how leading companies are engaging their customers through different mediums and a quick idea on how you can create a green tool kit

Engage Customers to be Part of the Solution

Without customers, you can’t run a business. What would happen if you work together to achieve a goal? eBay realized the most powerful thing they could do as a company would be to invite their consumers into the equation. Many of their customers have green values—when they opened the eBay Green Team (ebay.com/greenteam), 40,000 people signed up over night. The Green Team, along with their corporate commitment to sustainability, has strengthened relationships with their customers and helped them achieve an authentic green identity in the marketplace.

Whether it’s a top down or bottom up approach, at one point or another you can’t avoid your guest’s needs. Start taking action by creating a Green Team at your hotel and explore creative ways you can engage your guests during their stay and away. Create a space for them to express themselves about your initiatives and allow them to make recommendations or participate in one way or another. Who knows, they might have some good ideas too.

As part of Intuit’s sustainability strategy, which reaches millions of small businesses with its software programs, have made a commitment to helping their customers be more sustainable. They developed Green Snapshot, a new free tool to help small businesses quickly and easily estimate a company’s carbon footprint and identify recommended actions to shrink it, saving customers money in the process.

Simple idea from Yahoo!. They make green relevant to its consumers through Yahoo! for Good, a campaign that offers tips and resources for going green, and Yahoo! Green, one of the most popular environmental sites on the Web. I’ve seen many hotels take this idea and incorporate it into their own green hotel initiative.

Use Art to Raise Awareness

Here are a few examples of how Yahoo! and eBay raised company awareness.

At Yahoo!, “Chuck the Cup” Day was held at four of their campuses to raise awareness about the environmental impact of using paper cups and highlight the things employees can do to create a more sustainable workplace. The project is the brainchild of Kai Haley, a Yahoo! Green Team member and the “Andy Goldsworthy “ of trash. She calculated how many paper cups are consumed every 15 minutes on Yahoo!’s main campus and created hexagon globes out of thrown away cups.

Along with providing incentives to encourage employees to bring their own mug, Yahoo! put the attention‐getting sculptures that Kai created on their main lawn, each of them representing the number of coffee cups (over 100) used in 15 minutes at their headquarters.

One of eBay’s local Green Teams was determined to phase bottled water out of their office. Prior to installing filters and chillers and removing water bottles from break rooms, they invited employees’ children to participate in a poster contest with the theme “what does water mean to you?” Winning posters were displayed around the office, along with facts and statistics to educate employees on the environmental impact of bottled water production and consumption. The team credits the poster campaign with increasing awareness and support for the project and allowing for a successful transition.

Create a Toolkit to Support and Guide Green Teams

To make it easier for your Green Team (or all your employees), consider cmpling a “Greening Toolkit.” For example, Deloitte’s green program toolkit includes 37 suggested best practices and greening projects, focused on energy consumption, paper consumption, daily product consumption, waste reduction, recycling and travel.

The program is monitored through a “Greening the Dot” Web site, which charts the number of toolkit projects that have been completed, kicking up competition between office locations. In the first six months, over half of the workforce engaged in the implementation of over a thousand greening projects across nearly 100 offices, and reducing energy, water, paper use and travel and increasing recycling.

In the end, they saved resources, reduced waste and realized savings. Everyone won! Being sustainable justmakes economical sense.

Next months newsletter will close this series with: Alighn Green Teams with Corporate Sustainability Goals. Don’t miss it!

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.”

The focus on greening operations is evolving and some green teams are beginning to focus their efforts on integrating sustainability into employees’ personal lives, while others are aligning their efforts to support broader corporate sustainability objectives.

The business value of these three levels includes: cost savings by integrating energy efficiency into the workplace and products and services; attracting and retaining the best and brightest talent who want to for companies and hotels with an authentic green commitment; and increased market share and revenues resulting from a stronger brand and new, innovative green products and services.

This GREEN TEAM series will provide a summary of the emerging trends and outlines the best practices for green teams:

• Start with the visible and tangible: focus on internal operations
• Get senior management involved, but don’t lose the grassroots energy
• Engage employees to capture ideas
• Communicate and share best practices
• Engage employees with their bellies: The low carbon diet campaign
• Engage employees in their personal lives
• Engage guests to be part of the solution
• Use art to raise awareness
• Create a toolkit to support and guide green teams
• Align green teams with corporate and hotel sustainability goals

This is a resource for companies, organizations and individual hotels just getting started and for those who want to take their existing green program to its next level. It is based on interviews with green team leaders, as well as a review of the latest literature and reports on employee engagement and green hotel teams.

GREEN TEAMS: Introduction

Keeping employees engaged, happy and productive has always been a priority for leading companies, organizations and individual hotels.

Today, as green becomes more mainstream, a growing number of employees want to work for a company committed to sustainability and seek a work setting where the green practices they value at home are being implemented at their workplace.

In a survey commissioned by National Geographic magazine, more than 80 percent of U.S. workers polled said they believe it is important to work for a company or organization that makes the environment a top priority. In 2009, many graduating Harvard MBAs signed an “MBA oath” showing their interest for companies that “strive to create sustainable economic, social and environmental prosperity worldwide.”

Green teams – self-organized, grassroots and cross-functional groups of employees who voluntarily come together to educate and build awareness about sustainability issues and to implement programs that encourage employees and hotel guests to take action – are increasing in popularity as a tool for both keeping employees engaged and showing your commitment to sustainability.

This GREEN TEAMS series provides an overview of some of the best green practices companies and hotels are using to support and guide green teams, without squashing their grassroots passion and energy. It is divided into four key sections:

• Making the business case for green teams;
• Getting started;
• Four emerging trends; and
• Green hotel team best practices.

Look out for EcoGreenHotel’s May Eco Newsletter as we bring you: Making the business case for green teams.

I received an email last week with the question, “Do you recommend any particular carbon offset company?” Great question and an even better topic to share since March 27 is all about climate change.

If you follow the news, chances are you’ve come across some sort of reference to carbon offsets. Its become all the rage as events like the winter Olympics and New York Fashion Week to people like Al Gore, Dixie Chicks and actors including George Clooney buy offsets in an effort to become “carbon neutral.” Not to mention, businesses around the world are taking a closer at their contributions to climate change, with an increasing number voluntarily reducing their “carbon footprint” too. What about you and your business?

Before you understand what’s involved, you need to know what it “is.”

Offsetting, in simple terms, is paying someone else to absorb or avoid the release of a ton of CO2 elsewhere so that the purchaser of a carbon offset (or credit) can aim to compensate for or, in concept, “offset” their own emissions.

Carbon offsets are a form of trade. When you buy an offset, you fund projects that reduce GHG emissions. Since GHG emissions circulate freely in the atmosphere and spread around the planet, the projects can be located anywhere in the world and still make an impact.

There are two types of carbon markets: compliance schemes and voluntary programs. Compliance markets are created and regulated by mandatory national, regional and international carbon reduction regimes like Kyoto Protocol (the largest). The voluntary carbon market functions outside of the compliance market. It enables businesses, NGOs and individuals to offset their emissions by purchasing offset independent of the Kyoto Protocol and local regulatory systems.

Why do businesses buy carbon offsets?

• Strengthen environmental image
• Position to meet upcoming government legislation on emission reductions
• Market differentiation by growing sales and brand awareness
• Communicate action on climate change to guests, employees, investors and other stakeholders
• Starting point of real emission reduction strategy

Hotel businesses buy carbon offsets to reduce their carbon footprint or build up their green image on a voluntary basis. Here’s what you need to know:

The voluntary market does not have a specific, well-defined regulatory apparatus, and is actually a mix of many different types of activities, providers and standards.

• There are numerous standards within the market from the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), Gold Standard, ISO 14064, VERplus to certification programs as the Green-e Climate Program.

• Each provider is different. The company’s operations and project vary tremendously from renewable energy, methane capture, energy efficiency to industrial gases and forest & agriculture.

Since there are endless options and the market certainly isn’t short of players, it can definitely get confusing. This is why you’ll need to keep a scorecard. There are many factors that need to be considered, as:

• Offsets should come from a real project that has actually been implemented or will be in the near future (guaranteed)
• It’s vital that the offset comes from a project that wouldn’t have happened otherwise (in “addition” to business-as-usual)
• Emission reduction from the offset project needs to be accurately quantified (establish baseline and monitoring plan)
• Offsets should be independently verified
• Provider should be registered with the government or be established as a contractor to avoid double counting (which has been a major issue)
• Offsets should be a permanent project making a permanent impact
• Offsets should not cause or contribute to adverse effects on human health or environment
• Offsets should provide development benefits (sustainability) to host country

These are areas I consider to be very important when evaluating a provider.

Going Carbon Neutral Game Plan

I recommend a three-step process to neutralize your hotel’s carbon emissions.

STEP 1: Conserve Resources

There are many strategies to conserve resources from reducing energy usage, water conservation to waste management. Your hotel can easily reduce energy use and save money by installing energy efficient lighting, water conserving fixtures and purchasing efficient electronics and appliances – to name a few. The team at EcoGreenHotel can help you implement an energy efficient strategy.

STEP 2: Buy Green

From clean, renewable energy to green, environmentally friendly products like cleaning supplies, you can find everything you need these days to operate your hotel sustainably. Many local utilities are beginning to generate their own sources of power through small-scale alternative energy projects. Products and services that have earned third-party certifications, contain recycled content, are recyclable and/or biodegradable and contain fewer or no toxins are now easy to find at www.EcoGreenHotelStore.com.

STEP 3: Offset Carbon Emissions

Take a look at the following helpful sites:

Carbon Offset Project List (www.carbonoffsetlist.org)

Carbon Catalog Project List (www.carboncatalog.org)

Clean Development Mechanism Approved Project List (http://cdm.unfccc.int)

EcoGreenHotel offers carbon market services to accurately quantify your hotel’s carbon footprint, help you offset your emissions by identify worldwide projects and monetize the credits to generate added income.

From a different angle, offsets do present a paradox. On one hand, they offer a cost-effective tool to reduce net emissions. However, as their popularity grows so does the criticism. Critics have likened corporate offsets to “bargaining with the devil” and putting “lipstick on a pig.” Despite the controversy, carbon offsets should not be ignored. Around the world, increasingly diverse companies of all sizes are finding offsetting to be an important component to their business model – from relationships with partners and customers to it being an option to address the pressures associated with climate change.

On Saturday, March 27th at 8:30 p.m. local time, the largest public demonstration for action on climate change will take place as lights are symbolically turned off for one hour. One billion citizens of the world joined in 2009 and this year won’t be any less than massive.

Since it’s inception three years ago, the World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF) Earth Hour encourages everyone from homes, office buildings, iconic landmarks to universities, cities and municipalities to turn off their lights for an hour – saving some electric energy in the short term while encouraging all to ponder and act on environmental issues in the long term.

Some of the world’s recognized symbols of hope, peace, human endeavor and natural wonder will plunge into darkness including CN Tower in Toronto, Table Mountain in Cape Town, Grand Palace in Bangkok to the Golden Gate Bridge, Mount Rushmore and the world’s second tallest building Taipei 101.

The Earth Hour 2010 video, provides a powerful message by the world’s most recognized landmarks contributing to the greatest display of civil action the world has ever witnessed.

Show your guests you care and play an active role in your community, the world, by inviting them to participate. Although you can’t turn off all the hotel lights since you operate 24/7, but you can ask your guests to turn the room lights off and join you in the lobby or restaurant to mingle over drinks – maybe even hand out tree or plant seeds at the end or educate them on what your hotel is doing to reduce it’s green house gases and become sustainable. I can just imagine all the creative ways you can get your guests to join in the fun!

With 25 days left, here at EcoGreenHotel, we’ll be planning our own electricity-free activities – and yes, we have signed up! You can find out if your state, city, town, business or organization has signed up to join Earth Hour by visiting www.earthhour.org and clicking on your state.

EcoGreenHotel’s Director of Sustainability, Jeff Kiec recently completed a series of green hotel case study presentations in Texas and Arkansas. Along with the local Convention and Visitor Bureaus of Bentonville, Arkansas and Plano, Texas and the SBDC for Enterprise Excellence, EcoGreenHotel spread the word about hospitality sustainability initiatives.

One of the most attention-grabbing topics addressed was the use of Eco-Labels and the growing importance of third party certification programs to determine the true extent of a green hotel’s sustainability initiatives. A consensus was reached that there is an immense need for the hospitality industry to determine a clearer definition of a truly “green” hotel. This would help to reward those hotels that implement and maintain robust sustainability programs and marginalize those that overstate or completely green-wash their efforts for short-term gain.  During the question and answer sessions, discussions developed on how to differentiate the hard work required to achieve various green hotel certifications and which of those programs garner the most credibility amongst the traveling public and sustainability professionals.

In addition, a common thread was uncovered, the willingness of the municipalities to support hotels in their efforts to operate in a sustainable manor. Christopher Day, Commercial Recycling Supervisor for the City of Plano, provides guidance and training for businesses to develop robust recycling programs of all sizes. Helping create recycling programs is viewed as a win-win situation for both the municipalities and the hotels. By reducing the amount garage sent to land fills, the City wins by reducing long-term re-occurring costs. The hotels win by reducing the number of weekly hauls, reducing total cost of hauling, creating a revenue stream with its recyclable products and creating a culture of environmental responsibility among its employees.

Due to the interest and success of this series of presentations, EcoGreenHotel will be hosting another round of presentations in Dallas, Austin and San Antonio in the coming months.  The future case study presentations with cover the role of social media in reputation management, expanded detail on Eco-labels, third party certifications, and additional real world cost savings case studies.

EcoGreenHotel would like to pay special thanks to Wendy Bader of the Bentonville Convention and Visitors Bureau, Mark Thompson of the Plano Convention and Visitors Bureau, and Tom Pryor of the Small Business Development Center of Enterprise Excellence.  We appreciate your efforts and help!

You can learn more about their organizations at:

http://www.sbdcexcellence.org

http://www.bentonvilleusa.org

http://www.planocvb.com/main/index.php

As we look towards better days in 2010 I am reminded of a presentation, I attend at the ALIS conference few years back, by a noted futurist, discussing the business, economic and social trends that we could expect to see in the next 10, 20 even 50 years.

It was an eye-opener, very thought provoking and certainly relevant to a room full of room full of hoteliers. I recently thought about that when I came across the book the EXTREME FUTURE by James Canton. In it, you will be glad to know that the author predicts a move toward green sustainability, as well as great business opportunities for those involved in eco-friendly products and services. We are EcoGreenHotel hope he is right!
The book itself is a visual trip forward, taking the reader to tomorrowland, but also explaining in detail the trends that will shape our world in the 21st century. This has been a life’s work for Mr. Canton, who heads up the Institute for Global Futures, a San Francisco think tank that forecasts trends for government and corporate clients. He was once a student of Alvin Toffler, who wrote Future Shock way back in 1970 and was a pioneer in the field of FUTURISM.

Forecasting is a key business component for all companies, and to many of us it is a vital part of our jobs. From his book, here are the top 10 trends that James Canton sees for the future:

The Top 10 Trends of The Extreme Future:

1. Fueling the Future – The energy crisis, the post-oil future, and the future of energy alternatives like hydrogen. The critical role that energy will play in every aspect of our lives in the 21st century.

2. The Innovation Economy – The transformation of the global economy based on the convergence of free trade, technology and democracy, driving new jobs, new markets, globalization, competition, peace and security. The Four Power Tools of the Innovation Economy are Nano-Bio-IT-Neuro.

3. The Next Workforce – How the workforce of the U.S. is becoming more multicultural, more female and more Hispanic. Why the future workforce must embrace innovation to become globally competitive.

4. Longevity Medicine – The key forces that will radically alter medicine such as nanotech, neurotech, and genomics, leading to longer and healthier lives.

5. Weird Science – How science will transform every aspect of our lives, culture and economy—from teleportation to nanobiology to multiple universes.

6. Securing the Future – The top threats to our freedom and our lives, from hackers to terrorists to mind control. Defining the risk landscape of the 21st century.

7. The Future of Globalization – The new realities of global trade and competition; the rise of China and India; the clash of cultures and ideologies; and the cultural-economic battle for the future.

8. The Future of Climate Change – How the environment is changing and how we need to prepare for increased global warming, pollution, and threats to biodiversity.

9. The Future of the Individual – The risks and challenges from institutions, governments, and ideologies in the struggle for human rights and the freedom of the individual in the 21st century.

10. The Future of America – The power of America and its destiny to champion global democracy, innovation, human rights and free markets. Copyright © 2007 Dr. James Canton & IGF

And, while no one can truly predict the future, having access to knowledge and trending information is critical to anyone who has a stake in where we are all headed.
EXTREME FUTURE also recognizes that the convergence of many of these single trends also have implications and impacts on each other. Fascinating reading, both from a business and personal perspective, the book is now available in paperback. Let us know what you think, and if you have a book that you highly recommend let us know that as well and we will pass the word.

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EcoGreenHotel recognizes Caroma as a leader in smart technology for water conservation in the hospitality industry. If you are in the midst of planning ahospitality development or in preparation stage of a renovation you must consider Caroma dual flush toilets and high efficiency urinals to bring easy maintenance and easy water savings to your project.

With Caroma’s high efficiency (HET) dual flush toilets, you don’t need to trade flushing performance for water savings. Caroma’s toilets are designed to work together as a complete flushing system that takes into consideration waste removal as well as proper drainline carry out.

Using gravity forced “washdown”, this system delivers more energy from less water and pushes (rather than siphons) waste out of the bowl, quite simply making the water work harder and more efficiently.

All Caroma floor-mount toilets are WaterSense labeled, meaning they use at least 20% less water than the current federal standard while still providing equal or superior performance. It’s a simple two button flushing system. The reduced flush button releases 0.8 gallons per flush (gpf) for liquid and paper waste. The full flush button releases 1.28-1.6 gpf for solid waste. This can save up to 44% more water than the standard 1.6 gpf single flush toilet and up to 74% more water than a 3.5 gpf single flush toilet.

Caroma is also a major supplier of high efficiency urinals. The H2Zero waterless urinal utilizes breakthrough technology to use zero water for optimum performance and water conservation. The H2Zero’s unique patented cartridge technology does not use an oil-based seal, as traditionally used in waterless urinals. The Bio Seal™ allows urine to pass through the seal freely, eliminating unnecessary waste build-up within the cartridge and acts as a one-way airtight valve to seal the cartridge from the drainage system.

The Cube3 Ultra urinal is the first liquid-sensing automatic flushing mechanism that detects usage rather than motion to activate the electronic flush valve, eliminating accidental flushing. The smart controller automatically reduces flushing frequency during periods of high use.
Businesses and households enjoy other features of Caroma toilets. For example, the trap size is nearly double the North American standard, enabling the system to eliminate clogging and double flushing. Additionally, Caroma 270 toilets come with an adjustable offset connector for 10”-12” rough-ins that accommodate rough-in variations and make the toilet ideal for retrofits and renovations. The unique style and clean lines also provide for easy cleaning.

The Hilton Palacio del Rio hotel in San Antonio installed 470 Caroma Sydney 305 elongated toilets in 2007. During the first eight months after the toilet installation, the Hilton Palacio had saved nearly six million gallons of water compared to the same months one year earlier. Guest complaints about toilet problems have dropped more than 90%.
More information is available at www.caromausa.com or (800) 605-4218.

Do you know about an environmentally-friendly product that deserves to be the subject of an EcoFeature? Tell us about it in an email to info@EcoGreenHotel.com and we may spotlight it on our website or blog, or in our newsletter!

About EcoGreenHotel
EcoGreenHotel conducts sustainability and energy efficiency analysis of hotels. EGH specializes infinding local, state and government programs that offer credits and rebates available to owners, developers and operators of hotels. Additionally, EGHhosts on-site workshops, case study seminars,staff training, and guides facilities through the LEED, Green Seal and Energy Star certification process.

www.EcoGreenHotel.com offers a marketplace for green hotel products and services and provides a one- stop venue for green hospitality industry news, basic environmental overviews and other tools like green hotel checklists, project ideas, book lists, and valuable links designed to promote a more sustainable hospitality industry.
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