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So You Want To Go Green? Here's how going green will make you a good corporate citizen, as well as some practical tips for making it happen. Friday, November 21, 2008 Patrice A Kelly

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By running an environmentally responsible operation with cost-effective procedures and facility improvements, hotels and motels can demonstrate leadership in ecological sustainability and enhance competitiveness. The benefits of a green hotel program include: lower operating costs; increased customer and employee satisfaction; reduced environmental impact; and increased marketability as an environmentally friendly business.

That has been the case for the Hilton San Francisco, which is now in its twelfth year of recycling discarded supplies. Through the San Francisco Hotels/Nonprofit Collaborative, hundreds of thousands of tons are harvested each year and redirected from landfills to the surrounding community. The program has raised the property’s profile as a good corporate citizen and saved an enormous amount in trash removal costs.

In 1990, Fairmont developed its comprehensive Green Partnership program, designed to minimize the hotels' environmental impact. The program focuses on improvements in waste management, energy and water conservation, habitat protection, purchasing, and community outreach through local partnerships. In 2007, Fairmont initiated Eco-Meet, a program option for meeting planners looking to green their events, which outlines many green practices and includes a useful checklist. Early in 2008, Fairmont entered into a partnership with the World Wildlife Fund to help combat climate change by measuring and reducing its carbon dioxide emissions.

Disney also began going green in 1990 with its “Environmentality” initiatives. At Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, several properties have received a Green Lodging Designation from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. Walt Disney World Resort also received the 2007 Florida Energy Achievement Award for efficient use of energy, energy conservation, energy education, and renewable energy.

The public relations value of programs like these is incalculable. They raise awareness in the mind of the individual consumer and give meeting planners an incentive to approach these properties when looking for sustainable meeting venues.

There are also significant federal tax benefits associated with going green. Sec. 179D of the IRS Code provides a significant deduction for the cost of energy-efficient improvements to commercial property. In order to get the full deduction, the building has to be 50 percent more efficient than the baseline established by the reference building. Go to www.epa.gov/greenbuilding/tools/funding.htm for more details.

Some states give green building tax credits; check your state tax authority for information.

Creating the Plan

How do you make more “green” when going green?  It starts with a plan.

As with any change strategy, corporate management and an active team within the hotel must be committed to a recycling, reuse, or reduced consumption program in order to make it successful. Presently, most hotel greening programs are done on an individual property basis, and depend greatly on the property’s location and where the greatest need for change exists.

“The first thing they’re going to actually do is form a ‘green team’, which is normally one person from each department,” says Patricia Griffin, founder of the Green Hotels Association, a Houston-based membership organization that provides guidelines and resources for hotels on greening their operations www.greenhotels.com. For a nominal one-time fee, members have access to the organization’s database of advice, resources and green vendors.

“At first they will sit down with a set of guidelines and check off what they were already doing,” says Griffin. “They go through it the second time and mark off the things they intend to do in the next 12 months. They take that list and set a timeline on each item. We then ask them to pin up their utility bills in the back of the house so that staff can understand the enormous costs involved. They would then set goals for that like, ‘we’re going to reduce this cost by 2% in a month, or 10% in six months.’ They would then be asked to tell management what they can do every day to reduce these bills.” Audits are done on waste management, energy efficiency, water conservation and carbon emissions, to identify those areas that need attention and to prioritize the actions to be taken.

The association’s Quick Start program gives its members a list of easy, cost-effective techniques and resources for becoming greener, quickly. In water conservation, Griffin says, “the first thing I would do on any property is install 0.5 sink aerators, they cost a dollar or less, are easily installed and save a ton of water. And it’s virtually invisible to the guest. If there are older toilets in the property, they can install toilet tank fill diverters. They are also invisible to the guest and save about three quarters of a gallon of water per flush.”

Griffin also urges older properties to check the diverter gasket, which stops water from going through the tub spout when the shower is running. A malfunctioning diverter can waste a great deal of water, as well as the energy used to heat it.

Cost Savings by the Case
Although there are upfront costs associated with becoming an ecologically friendly property, many changes will pay for themselves in short order. Those savings then add up on the asset side of the balance sheet.

The EPA says that investing in energy-efficient lighting upgrades can yield a profit of $6.27 on each dollar invested. According to the Alliance to Save Energy, fluorescent lamps produce four times as much light per watt as incandescent lamps, and last eight to ten times longer. A compact fluorescent light used in place of an incandescent light that is left on continuously for 12 months, all 8,760 hours of the year, will pay for itself within that time. The Sheraton Tacoma Hotel replaced 2,000 incandescent light fixtures with quadruple-tube compact fluorescent light bulbs in guest rooms and the lobby. The cost saving was calculated at $15,000 with a payback rate of 18 months.

The THC Rotorua Hotel in New Zealand had urinals that flushed automatically every nine minutes, with each flush using 10 liters of water. This added up to 66 liters per hour, or 1,580 liters per day, per urinal, whether they’d actually been used or not. The hotel installed sensors that detect when the urinals are actually used and allow flushing to occur at a specified time afterward. This program reduced water consumption to 40 liters per urinal during the day and 20 liters in the evening. In addition, the hotel installed low-flow showerheads. The annual cost savings for the water conservation came to $5,244, with a payback of only seven months.

The Hyatt Regency Chicago’s recycling program recovers about 70 percent of recyclable materials from six million pounds of garbage, preventing one million pounds of refuse from being put in Chicago’s landfills each year. The hotel’s waste hauling costs have been cut by 50 percent. By sorting the trash, the hotel has also recovered silverware, towels, dishes, coffee servers and other equipment worth around $120,000.

The idea of starting a green program may be intimidating, but to reap the rewards, the time to start is now. “When you’re starting something new, especially in business, it’s scary,” says Hill, “but this is not a fad, it is not going to go away. So it makes more sense; before there’s regulation, the most successful are doing something now. There are buyers looking for suppliers that have these services and the more they can provide that the easier it’s going to be when it gets to the point that it’s regulated.”