GREEN TEAMS Part 1

The focus on greening operations is evolving and some green teams are beginning to focus the 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 includs: 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, butdon’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.

Earth Day 2010: Engaging Your Guests & Community

A new report by, the non-profit research organization, Center for Responsible Travel (formerly Travel Center on Ecotourism and Sustainable Development) found that responsible tourism has withstood the global recession better than the tourism industry as a whole. Perhaps that’s one reason many hotels are eagerly embracing Earth Day (though we’d like to think that a growing commitment to sustainable practices plays a role).

Celebrate April 22nd - and help raise awareness about environmental concerns with your green hotel guests and community – by hosting one of the following top ten ideas.


Start a Community Garden

With just a little bit of space, raw material, and effort, a community garden within your green hotel’s landscape serves many purposes. It can get guests and the community actively involved in an eco-related activity; produce fresh fruits and vegetables for your restaurant/kitchen or beautiful flowers for scenery. It also helps bring the community closer together at your hotel! It will definitely leave an impression.

Serve Sustainable Food

If you have a restaurant at your green hotel, allow your Chefs to serve sustainable entrees. When the bill comes, diners can donate $1 to a non-profit charitable eco-friendly organization like the National Geographic Society.

“Go Green, Save Green” Package

Offer guests a custom green stay package, which can include room discount, favorable hybrid parking spot, and percent off on organic products and services at your gift shop, spa, restaurant, or bar.

Change the Lights

Being a “green” hotel starts with the basics. Make sure all the lights in the hotel are eco-friendly to help conserve energy. Compact fluorescent light bulbs, halogen light bulbs and LEDs are all good choices.

Earth Day Green Project

Enlist your guests and employees to take part in a community restoration, clean-up or any other environmentally friendly project (even if it’s simply planting trees). Afterwards, they can take advantage of discounts at your bar, restaurant, or on eco-minded spa services.

Replace Disposables

May of the items hotel guests and employees use every day can be improved to be reusable and reduce waste. Replace your drinking cups with these compostable World Art hot & cold cups or how about a refillable water bottle, for starters.

Join a Resource Pledge

Make a pact (or policy) with your employees, guests and others, locally or on a national scale, to help conserve resources. Involve your guests by inviting them to participate in a “Take a short shower” program (give out branded shower timers that guest can take home and use) or “Turn all lights off during daylight hours” or simply purchase recycled paper only from now on; etc.

Attend a Rally

Sheer force of numbers helps to raise awareness about environmental issues. Show your community and guests your commitment to being a green hotel. Be a face in the crowd at a local rally to help tip the scale in favor of eco-friendliness. You can enlist employees and guests to attend. Gather for pre-rally fun and shuttle everyone to the event! Your hotel’s good stewardship will definitely recognized.

Hybrid Parking & Bike Rentals

Offer complimentary, special spot, parking for hybrid vehicles and offer free or discounted bike rentals to guests to explore your city. Don’t forget the bike rack!

Hold a “Green” Wine & Food Event

Celebrate the day with local wineries, restaurants, farms and locally sourced products. You can offer a special Sustainable Wine & Food lunch or dinner to your guests and community or go all out and have a festival right at your green hotel. Either way, you’ll definitely make the local newspaper (make sure you let them know in advance).

Made from Corn, Sugarcane & Plant Starch

EcoGreenHotel recognizes the importance of using products made from renewable resources in the effort to lessen the impact disposable products have on our environment. By using products made from renewable resources such as corn, sugarcane, PLA, Plant Starch and post consumer fibers, carbon footprints can be significantly reduced.

Sugarcane

Eco-Products offers a 100 percent compostable alternative to conventional tree-based paper products. Known as Bagasse, these paper items are made from sugarcane fiber after the sugar ‘juice’ has been extracted. This renewable resource is grown and harvested every year and a half. Typically, sugarcane fiber is a discarded by-product from cane sugar manufacturing, but Eco-Products uses the material, creating an end-user product and completing the circle.

What is PLA?

PLA stands for polylactic acid, or Polylactide, a versatile polymer produced by NatureWorks LLC. PLA is made from lactic acid. Ingeo™ biopolymer is the world's first and only performance plastic made from 100% annually renewable resources. It offers the cost and performance necessary to compete with traditional petroleum-based materials in the packaging and serviceware markets. It’s clear and strong like petroleum-based plastic, but with the crucial benefit of being commercially compostable.

Plant Starch

Plant Starch is the material we use to make our high heat tolerance cutlery. This material is made from a variety of plant starches including corn, potatoes, and other vegetables. It has a heat tolerance of 220 degrees, which makes it optimal for hot foods.

What is PCF (Post Consumer Fiber)?

Post consumer recycled fiber (PCF) is one of the materials we use to make our new Evolution World hot cups. Post consumer waste is material discarded after someone uses it. Post consumer waste has served its intended purpose, passed through the hands of a final consumer, and has been discarded for disposal or recycling.

Our Evolution World hot cups are made with 24% post consumer recycled fiber. That means that 24% of the fiber used to make these cups has already served a purpose as something else (office paper most commonly), was sent through the recycling stream, and was repurposed into foodservice grade paperboard. The FDA for foodservice use certifies this paperboard.

Offering products with post consumer recycled fiber has the added benefit of helping stimulate demand for recycled paper, thus helping support the recycling markets here in the United States.

Carbon Offsets In A Nutshell -By Susan Patel

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.

Lights Out for Climate Change – Earth Hour 2010

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 Case Studies in North Texas and Northwest Arkansas

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

Green Hotel Event comes to Bentonville Arkansas

The Bentonville Convention & Visitors Bureau and EcoGreenHotel have teamed up to bring the local hotel community an educational look inside the Green Hospitality movement. EcoGreenHotel’s Jeff Kiec LEED AP will be presenting real world case studies. Bentonville is the worldwide headquarters of Wal-Mart a global corporate leader in the sustainability movement. Jeff Kiec is the Corporate Director of Sustainability and will present examples of hotel energy efficiency, innovative technologies and green marketing. All case studies are based on real results from around the country. These proven solutions help general managers and building engineers increase their occupancy while lowering their overall costs.

Learn how hotels can quickly and economically stay competitive with leaders in the hospitality industry that are gaining the attention of the green traveler. The case studies will cover:

• “Eco labels” for hotels
• Swimming pool energy and chemical use reductions
• Occupancy Based Energy Management Systems
  
• Guest room and back of the house recycling programs
• Operational cost savings
• Web-based marketing strategies
• And much more…..

There will be no charge for the event and will include a great lunch sponsored by US Energy Solutions. In addition, EcoGreenHotel will provide a free EnergyStar benchmark evaluation to a local hotel as a door prize.

Who should attend? – Hotel Owners, Management Companies, General Managers, Building Engineers, Sales & Marketing Directors

Thursday February 11^th 11:30am -1:00pm

DoubleTree Guest Suites Hotel

301 Southeast Walton Boulevard
Bentonville, AR 72712

Event Limited to 40 participants

Please RSVP to Wendy@bentonville.org

If you cannot make the Bentonville Event you can join us in Arlington TX on Tuesday February 16^th 2010 or Plano TX Thursday February 18^th 2010. Email JKiec@EcoGreenHotel.com for more information. Also contact us if you would like to hold a similar event in your area.

About Jeff Kiec

Jeff Kiec, LEED-AP

Corporate Director of Sustainability-EcoGreenHotel

Mr. Kiec is a veteran in the environmental service industry. His experience includes engineering building assessments, building and operational sustainability audits, and environmental site assessments. As the volunteer Sustainability Director for Deep Ellum, a historic arts and entertainment neighborhood in Dallas, Mr. Kiec is responsible for educating and working with neighborhood businesses and property owners to incorporate sustainable building technologies.

EcoGreenHotel is a valuable resource for hotels dedicated to supporting hospitality sustainability. You can visit www.EcoGreenHotel.com or www.EcoGreenHotelStore.com for more information.