Interior designers or anyone else who specifies or purchases items such as fabrics, wall coverings and floor coverings have had good reason to be excited lately. Increasingly, companies are offering sustainable options that are recyclable and that include high percentages of post-consumer and/or post-industrial recycled content. In the carpet world, product that is recyclable, and that has recycled content, has been available for quite some time, and manufacturers have been leading all industries in their commitment to sustainability. Interface FLOR, for example, has a goal of achieving a zero environmental footprint by 2020. Since 1999, Milliken & Co.’s carpet manufacturing plants have sent zero waste to landfills.
Last April, Valley Forge Fabrics Inc. launched a fabric reclamation program for its FRESH: Fabrics Redefining Environmental Standards (for) Hospitality line. The company is offering customers a pickup and delivery service that will deliver FRESH fabrics to a recycling facility at the end of their life cycle. Designtex also has a reclamation program for its Eclipse Collection of indoor/outdoor textiles. Each yard of fabric returned is converted into polypropylene resin pellets. These eventually are used to create products such as air filter and radiator fan housings for the automotive industry.
In May 2007, LSI Wallcovering introduced Second-Look, a program to reclaim previously installed vinyl wallcovering and turn it into new wallcovering designs with 18 percent recycled content and a minimum of 10 percent post-consumer. Designers and facility managers who specify Second-Look recycled wallcovering have the option to reclaim vinyl wallcovering from their renovation project and send it to LSI for recycling.
These are just a few examples of companies that are taking a “cradle to cradle” approach to the products they make and sell. The next time you are in the purchasing mode for floor coverings, wall coverings and fabrics, there are four things you need to consider in addition to durability: what the product is made from, how it is made, whether or not it can be recycled, and whether or not the company making it offers a reclamation (take-back) program.
Companies like those mentioned above are raising the bar for what is expected in sustainable, interior design. Choose to do business with those vendors who understand, and who take responsibility for, the entire life cycle of what they sell.
Carbon Monoxide Detector Reminder
Yet another person (Philip D. Prechtel, a retired engineer) has died in a hotel from carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning. Several others were sickened by the gas. It happened a little more than a week ago at the Best Western Allentown (Pa.) Inn & Suites. Preliminary investigations found that exhaust vents for water heaters had been blocked by unrelated construction work outside the building, and carbon monoxide was trapped inside. If you have not yet installed detectors in the guestrooms and back-of-house areas of your hotel, please do so. A detector in the guestroom of Mr. Prechtel most certainly would have saved his life.
Two New Green Lodging News Sponsors
Green Lodging News welcomes RoomService Amenities and NativeEnergy as new sponsors. The Morganville, N.J.-based RoomService Amenities has introduced Green from NATÜRA, an amenity program designed with the environment in mind. This collection features biodegradable bottles made from corn-based PSM (Plastarch Material). All natural, vegetable-based soaps and accessories are packaged in recycled paper cartons printed with soy-based inks. Even the shower cap is made from PSM. Customization and co-branding is available. Call (732) 591-0500, ext. 119, e-mail sales@roomserviceamenities.com, or go to www.roomserviceamenities.com.
The Charlotte, Vermont-based NativeEnergy is a provider of traditional renewable energy credits and offsets. These allow its customers to help build market demand for clean energy and other carbon mitigation projects. Some of the projects NativeEnergy is currently supporting include: the Wray School District wind turbine, Brubaker Farms anaerobic digester project, Hillcrest Saylor family dairy farm methane project, and farmer-owned distributed wind. For more information, call (802) 735-0796, e-mail travel@nativeenergy.com, or go to www.nativeenergy.com.
As always, I can be reached at editor@greenlodgingnews.com.
