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The lodging industry in California, with over 396,000 guest rooms, produces
approximately 600,000 tons of garbage every year! Hoteliers have many opportunities to
reduce waste by establishing waste prevention and recycling programs and by purchasing
recycled products. Besides reducing waste and saving money, these actions can increase
employee morale and customer satisfaction.
Getting Started
- Management should adopt an environmental policy to reflect how the company sees itself
in relation to the environment, neighbors, and the people it employs and serves. Chains
with multiple locations may want to encourage each hotel to evaluate and establish its own
program.
- For your program to be successful, management should appropriate the necessary staff and
funds to run your environmental program, and offer training to staff.
- Promote your program and successes to guests and conference attendees through your
advertising.
- Conduct a waste evaluation to identify waste prevention ideas and estimate the amount of
recyclable materials generated at your hotel. Chances are, you can use many of the
following ideas, which are being successfully used by many hotels and motels, and can help
you reduce waste and save money!
Waste Prevention
Waste prevention means not creating waste in the first place. Waste that is not created
does not have to be disposed, which saves money.
- Minimize waste by replacing disposable room amenities with refillable or reusable
substitutes.
- Establish purchasing guidelines to encourage the use of durable, repairable equipment,
and high-quality, reusable products such as linen and tableware.
- Donate soap and toiletries to local shelters.
- Distribute restaurant condiments from behind the counter, rather than in single-service
packets.
- Donate unserved food to local food banks. California's "Good Samaritan" law
protects the donor from liability if the food is properly stored and handled. Produce
scraps can be composted on site, or donated to local farmers for composting or animal
feed.
- Reuse old linens as aprons or towels, or donate them to local charities.
- Donate old furniture and equipment to institutions or charity.
- Purchase cleaning supplies in bulk to minimize packaging and save money. For example,
concentrated cleaning solutions can be diluted on site and dispensed in reusable
pump-spray bottles.
- Ask your vendors and suppliers to provide supplies that are not overpackaged. Ask them
to take back excess packaging for reuse.
- Change lighting from incandescent to fluorescent. Fluorescent bulbs last much longer,
meaning that you have fewer bulbs to dispose of and spend less time changing them. The
initial outlay will quickly be paid for by reduced energy costs.
- Practice grasscycling, that is, the natural recycling of grass by leaving clippings on
the lawn to decompose. They quickly release valuable nutrients back into the soil. Have
groundskeepers mulch or compost landscape wastes.
Le Chateau Montbello in Quebec, Canada has constructed a composting site, which will be
used to fertilize and mulch its herb garden.
The Ritz-Carlton in Pasadena makes aprons and napkins from stained, worn linens. By
also determining just the right amount of chemicals to use in laundering, the hotel saved
$45,000 in one year!
The Seattle Sheraton Hotel and Towers donated 2000 telephones from guest rooms to a
local housing organization, which made them available to low-income tenants.
Hotels in Florida have saved up to 50 percent in waste disposal costs by implementing
aggressive waste reduction efforts. These savings come from reduced garbage hauling costs
and the sale of recyclable materials.
Recycling
Hotels and motels generate large amounts of highly recyclable materials, such as office
paper, newspaper, corrugated cardboard, plastics, metals, and glass. Work with your waste
hauler or recycler to arrange the details of your recycling program.
- Consider recycling materials, such as glass, cans, cardboard, plastic, and cooking
grease from the restaurant.
- Work with suppliers to minimize the use of materials that are difficult to recycle, such
waxed cardboard.
- Collect old telephone books, magazines, newspapers, beverage containers, etc., from
guest rooms. Put out recycling containers for guests to use or have cleaning staff collect
them.
- Recycle office materials. Examples are computer and bond paper, beverage containers,
copier and printer cartridges.
- Recycle motor oils, antifreeze, paint, etc., used by groundskeeping and maintenance
staff.
Buy Recycled Products
The collection of recyclable materials is only the first step of the process we call
recycling. Interesting new products are being manufactured from your recyclables and
turning up in the marketplace. When you buy goods with recycled content, your purchases
help to create a demand for materials collected in recycling programs. Remember to ask
about a product's "postconsumer content." This means the product was made from
materials that were used and recycled by consumers, rather than from manufacturing wastes.
Review your existing purchasing policies to assure they do not exclude buying goods
with recycled content. Remove discriminatory standards that prevent the purchase of
recycled products. State in bid packets that your organization expects vendors to supply
products with recycled content.
Waste Reduction at Meetings, Conferences,
and Expos
Conferences and trade shows are often overlooked as a major source of waste generated
at hotels. The average trade show attendee takes home up to ten pounds of paper, and the
typical expo generates the equivalent of 170 trees in waste paper! Hotels and meeting
planners can reduce waste by planning low-waste meetings. Work with the corporations and
associations holding the meetings, and urge them to try some of these ideas:
- Announce to participating corporations, associations, and attendees, through mailings,
that waste prevention and recycling will be taking place.
- Urge attendees to reduce waste in their guest rooms as well. For instance, a guest may
choose not to have linens and towels replaced every day.
- If plastic badge holders are used, place collection bins at the meeting to collect them
for reuse at another conference.
- Don't offer wasteful gifts and premiums that attendees are likely to just throw away
after the conference. Give something useful, such as commuter mugs with the corporation
logo.
- Ask trade show and expo vendors to limit the amount of material they bring to the show
floor to that which they plan to distribute. (Some hotels are asking vendors to remove the
materials, rather than picking up the tab for disposal or recycling.)
- Use recycled paper products and plan for recycling by placing recycling containers at
all meeting sites.
- Print promotional materials on both sides of the paper, and minimize the use of glossy
paper.
For More Help:
- The "Green" Hotels Association is an
industry member organization that encourages, promotes and supports the
"greening" of the lodging industry. Their purpose is to bring together hotels
interested in environmental issues.
- Reduce, Reuse,
Recycle, It's Good Business, A Guide for California Businesses, 1994, CIWMB.
- Food For
Thought, Restaurant Guide to Waste Reduction and Recycling, Revised 1998, CIWMB.
- For more information on waste prevention in the hotel industry, call the Waste Prevention Information Exchange at (916)
341-6363.
- For the name of your local recycling coordinator call the CIWMB hotline at (800)
553-2962.
- CIWMB Buy Recycled Program, (916) 341-6481.
Publication #500-94-029
To order this publication, or for
more Business Waste Reduction Assistance, please contact us! If you have questions,
information, ideas, educational materials, etc., please share it with us so we can share
it with others!
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