Posted on 08/22/2007 9:02:46 PM PDT by Libloather
Hotels hop on the 'green' bandwagon
By Alfred Borcover, Special to the Chicago Tribune
August 22, 2007
In case you haven't noticed, hotels are going green, doing their part to be ecologically friendly. You might call it the Al Gore effect, although the movement began before "An Inconvenient Truth" won an Academy Award this year.
The green efforts go further than asking guests to use towels and bed linens more than once (as they do at home), to conserve water and avoid flushing more detergent-laden water into sewers. It's also more than replacing incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs in guest rooms.
Other green initiatives are subtler -- things a guest might never notice: recycling, low-flow faucets and showerheads, water-saving toilets and the use of products that don't harm the environment or contribute to global warming.
Whether guests truly care about these hotel efforts is another matter.
**SNIP**
Some 59 percent of frequent travelers admit to letting their "green routines" slip when on the road, according to a survey commissioned by the new Element extended-stay brand of Westin Hotels, part of Starwood Hotels & Resorts. Conducted by StudyLogic, a New York research firm, via telephone interviews with 1,041 respondents who had a minimum of three hotel stays over the last 12 months, the survey of frequent travelers found:
• 70 percent open a new mini-bottle of shampoo and conditioner each time they shower on the road.
• 75 percent expect fresh sheets and towels daily in a hotel, but not at home.
• 60 percent are more likely to leave a bathroom light on overnight in an unfamiliar hotel room than at home.
• 63 percent are more likely to leave a light on when they leave a hotel room than at home.
**SNIP**
(Excerpt) Read more at travel.latimes.com ...
It makes my blood boil when I see that notice about not changing your sheets to save the Earth, unless you ask....and they ask you to reuse towels. I do my best to use all the towels under those circumstances. If they posted a notice that they wanted to hold costs down to keep their rates low, then I’d likely go along with the game — but I refuse to participate in someone else’s religion of pagan Earth worship.
I DESPISE the low flow “green” toilets and showerheads in the hotels now. Give me Kramer’s “Commando 450” illegal (in NY City) showerhead! Used only for washing down elephants! For a one minute Seinfeld clip, click on:
Fine. Please stick to the important issues at hand. Are you doing anything to lower the rates of elk farts?
“It makes my blood boil when I see that notice about not changing your sheets to save the Earth, unless you ask....and they ask you to reuse towels.”
What should make your blood boil is that is a lie. They don’t do it to save the earth. I believe they do it to cut back on expensive union labor.
I traveled extensively last year and stayed only at Mariotts. That policy was not in place in all the hotels. Once you got South of the Mason-Dixon where the unions have little influence, there was no such policy. It’s not like it’s a company-wide policy in all their hotels. That is why I am very suspect about the “save the earth” BS they spout in SOME hotel locations.
Elk are now extinct in the Grove and it's a far better place for it.
Ah yes, those crappy water systems that never seem to get the job done. Europe doesn't even have proper shower heads, the whole thing is attached to a hand held shower head.
Cutting corners and saving expenses while at the same time telling the consumer that this is a GOOD thing but not cutting prices.
What’s their excuse for rarely washing the comforter even between different guests?
As long as the hotel lets me wonder down the hall to the ice machine in my underwear...I don’t care how green they get.
I don’t mind a bit re-using my sheets and towels.
Don’t mind even making my bed and emptying my trash and cleaning up after myself when I’m in a motel /hotel for more than one night. I’d be glad to do without any maid service.
Don’t mind saving water as long as the toilet flushes everything down first try.
Be glad to conserve fuel/electricity for the AC or heating as long as the temperature is reasonably comfortable.
As long as the room ‘rent’ is significantly less than what I would pay for full service.
But I don’t think that is likely to happen.
“What’s their excuse for rarely washing the comforter even between different guests?”
No excuse is good enough, IMO. No doubt to save money, though. It’s nearly always about money.
Much easier than ironing them, and another of the things that I do when traveling that I don't do at home.
This is based on the assumption that all travelers have "green routines."
Uh, are you talking about your underwear dude?
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