By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now

When Ric Richards recently acquired an aging McDonalds in Cary, N.C., he knew the place needed an overhaul. The 25-year-old store was fraying at the edges.

LED lighting at Cary McDonalds

Richards decided to give these particular golden arches a green touch.

Once he’d decided that the building needed replacing, the decision to go eco-friendly was not difficult. Richards knew it made sense from a business standpoint – it would cut energy costs dramatically – and he figured it would resonate with the educated customers living in the Research Triangle region, especially those interested in lower-carbon living.

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From Green Right Now Reports

Darden Restaurants today announced that it has begun a system-wide sustainable restaurant design initiative involving the use of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards in its restaurant design process for all new restaurants and, where feasible, restaurant remodels.

The company, which operates 1,800 restaurants, said the initiative is part of its broader sustainability efforts aimed at limiting business impact on the environment while also enhancing the operational efficiency of its restaurants.

Darden’s three largest brands – Red Lobster, Olive Garden and LongHorn Steakhouse – are designing eight restaurants to achieve LEED certification from the United States Green Building Council. The company said it plans to apply learnings from those eight restaurants to new restaurants and remodels in the future.

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The Addison Conference Centre in Texas features large windows to let in light, yet overhangs help block out mid-day heat. (Photo: The Town of Addison)

By Tom Kessler
Green Right Now

Much as a forest fire clears the land and leaves behind essential nutrients to enrich a new generation of growth, the devastation of the travel and meetings industry caused by a global economic collapse has left a few seedlings. One of them is the nascent green meeting industry, which has more than gotten a foothold. In many respects, green meetings are fast becoming the only kind of meetings.

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By Ashley Phillips
Green Right Now

Consumers are being more conscious now than ever before of their own sustainable practices. They are buying from local farmers markets, recycling, and switching to LED lights.

But when a person leaves home, say to go out to eat, they could pack on the carbon calories without realizing it — especially if the restaurant they visit isn’t treading lightly on the environment.

According to the Green Restaurant Association (GRA), the certification body aiming to create an environmentally sustainable restaurant industry, an average restaurant uses 300,000 gallons of water and produces 150,000 pounds of garbage a year. Even worse, the restaurant industry as a whole, which includes approximately 900,000 restaurants in the United States, is the largest consumer of electricity in the commercial sector.

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From Green Right Now Reports

A new organization of hundreds of American businesses is demanding comprehensive action by Congress on federal clean energy and climate legislation in the wake of the recent Copenhagen climate change summit.

In its first six weeks, the American Businesses for Clean Energy (ABCE) said it has grown from just 19 members to include over 800 businesses as of today. ABCE is a diverse coalition of businesses that support Congressional action to pass clean energy and climate legislation that will significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The organization is largely made up of small Main Street businesses, clean tech and green businesses, but it also includes major names such as Gap Inc, DB Climate Change Advisors (Deutsche Bank Group), and power companies FPL Group and New York Power Authority.

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From Green Right Now Reports

As international climate treaty negotiations continue in Copenhagen amid debate over the potential economic impact of new standards, a new report shows that the costs for small business operating under California’s landmark climate law (AB 32) can be measured in pennies.

Border Gill in Santa Monica

Conducted by leading economists and released by the Union of Concerned Scientists, the report found that AB 32 policies will only increase the percent of small business revenue spent on energy by only 0.3 percentage points–from 1.4 to 1.7 percent–in 2020. In a case study of one small business — Border Grill restaurant — the report fond AB 32 will cost diners 3 cents extra per $20 meal in 2020.

The peer reviewed analysis, The Economic Impact of AB 32 on California Small Businesses, used data on the cost characteristics of small businesses to estimate the economic impacts of AB 32 and was commissioned by UCS and conducted by The Brattle Group, an international economic consulting firm.

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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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