From Green Right Now Reports
LG Electronics USA,  a leading provider of flat-panel HDTVs to the lodging industry, said it will partner with Waste Management Inc. on the first recycling program for hotel operators to responsibly dispose of outdated television sets and computer monitors.
In 2010 alone, hundreds of hotels are expected to upgrade thousands of rooms with [...]

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By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now

If you’ve been taking your home green, you know how ideas can feed off each other. Someone gets picky about paper recycling; someone else becomes the food waste arbiter; pretty soon everyone has their eco-role and the household’s carbon footprint is shrinking.

Kimpton Hotels and Restaurants realized early on that green grows like that. The hospitality chain, with roots in San Francisco, has a history of putting eco-friendly ideas in place. Even before green hotel or green restaurant designations were developed, Kimpton was experimenting with eco-friendly practices at its San Francisco properties, such as the Hotel Triton, where motion sensors turn off lights and 60 percent of the waste gets recycled.

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By Ashley Phillips
Green Right Now

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) in conjunction with the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) and The Hospitality Industry Network (NEWH) asked interior designers to submit their plans for an eco-friendly guest room in their first-ever Sustainable Suite Design Competition.

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Green Right Now Reports

One could count a thousand ways humans have soiled the planet, from shearing off mountaintops to mine coal to dredging the bottom of the ocean with heavy, coral-destroying equipment.

Congress zeroed in on one needless waste stream, this past week introducing legislation in both houses to stop cruise ships from releasing untreated sewage into the ocean.

The Senate’s Clean Cruise Ship Act, proposed by Assistant Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) would extend the Clean Water Act to regulate the millions of gallons of waste water from cruise ships. The net effect would be a ban on the release of raw, untreated sewage.

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From Green Right Now Reports

In response to its members’ interest in green hotels, AAA said it will now designate AAA Approved lodgings that have been eco-certified through leading government or private programs.

A bright green “ECO” symbol will identify eco-friendly lodgings in the new 2010 editions of the AAA TourBook guides and on AAA.com. Additionally, travelers will be able to customize their hotel searches on the AAA web site to show green properties first in search results.

“The new ECO symbol serves as a notice to AAA members that a property has taken steps to become an environmental advocate,” Michael Petrone, director of AAA Tourism Information Development, said in a statement. “We are pleased to publish this information as a service to members who make sustainability a factor in their lodging selection.”

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By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now

It’s a rare hotel these days that doesn’t offer to not wash your sheets, in the interest of conserving water. A handful of hotels go further, touting their bamboo flooring, low-flow faucets and other flourishes.

But get ready traveler, you ain’t seen nothing yet. There’s an avalanche of green hospitality heading your way as some 700 hotels queue up to complete their LEED certifications with the US Green Building Council over the next year or so, and after their environmental inductions, you can bet they’ll be serving up more than just local greens. In the competitive travel industry, they’ll be competing for eco-kudos, showcasing everything from their fly ash foundations to their roof-top herb gardens.

For the savvy and weary business traveler, as well as the mom-and-pop tourist, this could be a fun new era. You’ll be treated to organic yogurt, natural mattresses and air quality systems. But it also holds perils for both guests and hotel operators.

Guests wanting to go green could quickly be confused by a cacophony of appeals. Travelocity and Orbitz now rate hotels on their eco offerings. AAA is going to stamp entries in its 2010 book with a green symbol denoting the supposed environmentally elite.

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By Harriet Blake
Green Right Now

“Don’t let the vacation ruin the destination.”

These words of wisdom hail from environmentalists who have legitimate concerns about ocean pollution due to cruise ship dumping.

Cruise ship vacations have gained in popularity in the last decade, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, which states that the industry has grown nearly twice as fast as any other means of travel during that time frame. And, at the same time, the average ship size has been growing at about 90 feet every five years. Ships used to average about 3,000 passengers, but today some carry as many as 8,000.

So with larger ships carrying more passengers, there is mounting concern about how this growth will affect the ocean’s marine life and water quality.

Recently the World Wildlife Federation’s Baltic Sea chapter recommended that area ports upgrade their facilities to cope with contamination from cruise ship sewage. The WWF said that Baltic-area ports are not keeping their facilities up-to-date in terms of disposing of cruise ship waste and suggested that the money being made by cruise ship tourism be spent upgrading the facilities, according to a report in the Environmental News Service.

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From Green Right Now Reports

Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and Restaurant Associates have unveiled a guide to green dining best practices, which is aimed at helping corporate cafeterias, museums and restaurants cut costs and spare the environment.

The science-based recommendations have been tested by two Restaurant Associates clients, Random House and Hearst Corporation. The two companies combined will save over $85,000 each year, cut 275 tons of carbon pollution and reduce landfill waste by 60 tons annually, according to early test results.

An earlier survey by the National Restaurant Association found that environmentally friendly equipment and sustainable practices topped chefs’ lists of hot trends and top cost-savers for 2009.

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FROM GREEN RIGHT NOW REPORTS:

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines has announced it’s ditching polystyrene coffee and tea cups to switch to “Bio-Cups” coated with Ingeo plant-based plastic, which are biodegradable and take up less space.

“The introduction of the Bio-Cups on board fits in perfectly with our sustainability policy,” said Bart Vos, executive vice president of In-Flight Services for KLM. “Our staff on board are also enthusiastic as the cups are not only environmentally friendly, but also easy to store and have a good design as well.”

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From Green Right Now Reports

Montage Beverly Hills, the 201-room luxury hotel that opened November 2008 in Beverly Hills, has earned Gold certification under the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) LEED for New Construction rating system.

This is the first certified ultra-luxury hotel in Southern California for LEED for New Construction and one of only four Gold certified hotels worldwide designated by this third-party benchmarking system designed to encourage the design, the construction and the operations of more sustainable buildings. Montage Beverly Hills is also the first newly constructed mixed-use hotel and residential project to be LEED certified as a single development, denoting it as a high performance building that is a responsible, efficient and healthy place to live and work.

“We’re gratified to have created and be operating Southern California’s first hotel and residential project to obtain Gold level certification,” Alan J. Fuerstman, founder and CEO of Montage Hotels & Resorts, said in a statement.

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Photo: The Orchard Hotel

From Green Right Now Reports

The Orchard Hotel has earned LEED-EB (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) certification for an existing building by the U.S. Green Building Council. San Francisco’s only hotel to earn this honor, the Orchard Hotel is the second hotel in California and fourth hotel in the world with this certification.

LEED-EB is the USGBC’s rating system for operating high performance buildings dedicated to whole-building cleaning and maintenance issues, recycling programs, exterior maintenance programs and systems upgrades.

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By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now

It can be a challenge to update an historic building, let alone transform it into a model of green modernity. Rattling pipes crowd walls that need new duct work; old fixtures adhere stubbornly to aging walls and facades retain character, but heating and cooling – not so much.

Still, the historic Heathman Hotel in downtown Portland has recently undergone two green upgrades, and is determined to become a model of sustainability, while sacrificing none of its landmark historic elegance.

The 81-year-old Heathman, like most vintage urban hotels, has been through many nips and tucks over the decades. It got its first green redo about three years ago with the renovation of the guest bedrooms and living areas and the addition of a new heating and cooling system. The project, which won financial incentives from the Energy Trust of Oregon, and included switching to CFL light bulbs, proved enlightening: The changes trimmed energy usage by 20 to 30 percent at the 150-room hotel.

“My return on investment, we realized that in less than two years; a year and half for the HVAC investment,” said hotel general manager Chris Erickson. “It was a wise idea and now as we move into the future, it’s all straight to the bottom line.”

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