What do Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, The Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Portugal, Greece, Luxembourg, and Iceland have in common? They are now all part of the territory in which lodging establishments can participate in TripAdvisor’s GreenLeaders program. TripAdvisor expanded its program beyond the United States this past week.For those of you not familiar with GreenLeaders, it is a green lodging recognition program that requires completion of a survey documenting green practices. Properties can earn one of four levels of recognition—Bronze, Silver, Gold or Platinum. The level of achievement, along with green...

In a previous position as an editor with IndustryWeek magazine I had an opportunity to visit some of the best manufacturing facilities in America. This past week I visited what has got to be one of the coolest ones. In case you missed it in last week’s newsletter, Harvest Power recently opened its Central Florida Energy Garden in Bay Lake, Fla. What the plant “manufactures” is energy and fertilizer from three different waste streams—food scraps; fats, oil and grease (FOG); and biosolids from an adjacent water treatment plant. Together, this “waste” is “digested” in an anaerobic digester with the...

Last week I mentioned that I am putting together a page on my site called “Hotel & Management Company Green Pages.” You can now click here to see it. I heard from a few of you with links to pages and I am pleased to announce that the page on my site is now up to 49 links. It is still very much a work in progress but there is now a prominent link to the page in the upper right area of the Green Lodging News website home page. There is also now a link on the left...

Some hotel companies make you dig through their website a bit to find the section dedicated to their environmental practices. Others make it easy to find. To get to Marriott’s environment page, for example, you need to first click on “Investors.” Would most folks know to do that? If you go to the home page for Wyndham Worldwide, right there in the middle of the top of the page is a “Corporate Responsibility” link that quickly gets you to the page you need. Choice Hotels International has a link to its Corporate Responsibility information at the bottom of its...

I had a conversation by e-mail this past week with Lynn Mueller, president of International Wastewater Systems. Lynn’s company is doing some things that I suspect none of you are doing. If I am wrong, please correct me. What International Wastewater Systems is doing is recovering heat from the wastewater that leaves buildings—not just the greywater from laundry, showers, etc., but also the blackwater. Yes, believe it or not, energy can be pulled from the wastewater that is flushed down the toilet. I will be posting an article about what Lynn’s company is doing this coming week. Be sure...

I would have liked to have gotten into more depth with my article on state green lodging certification/recognition programs—I posted the article this past week—but things can get a little unwieldy when trying to chat with 27 people. Twenty-seven is the number of states with certification/recognition programs, down from 28 last year. For my article I asked for an update on the number of lodging participants in each state’s program, what changes were made to the program in 2013, and what changes are in store in 2014.Within the state programs I counted 2,605 properties that have earned official certification...

Less than 10 months after officially launching GreenLeaders, TripAdvisor can now call its green accommodations recognition program the largest one in the United States. GreenLeaders got a big boost this past week with the addition of 1,375 U.S. Marriott International properties in one fell swoop. That happened thanks to a partnership with Green Hotels Global, a system operated by The Carbon Accounting Co. Marriott uses Green Hotels Global, a system that provides metrics-based information on the environmental footprint of hotels, to track the footprint of its more than 3,000 global properties.Ian Lipton, President and COO of The Carbon Accounting...

The next time you are in Fort Lauderdale, try looking up. You just might be within range of seeing the Hilton Fort Lauderdale Beach Resort’s six 52-foot, 4 kilowatt wind turbines that rise above the hotel’s rooftop. The brand new turbines were officially unveiled on Wednesday, January 29 during a ceremony that included two mayors and the following: Jose Luis Zapata, representing Conrad Fort Lauderdale Beach Residences; Diane Jaskulske, V.P. of Owner Relations for Hilton Worldwide; Randy Gaines, V.P. of Engineering for Hilton Worldwide; and Andreas Ioannou, General Manager for the Hilton Fort Lauderdale Beach Resort. Congratulations go out...

What is tolerated in our oceans would not be tolerated on land. I am convinced of that. Can you imagine going deer hunting for a buck and then killing every doe, rabbit, squirrel, hawk, chipmunk and eagle in the area just to get that one deer? In our oceans, the equivalent of that happens every day in the hunt for fish that is most marketable. According to a recent report issued by the Natural Resources Defense Council, in order to put wild-caught seafood on dinner tables, more than 650,000 marine mammals are killed or seriously injured every year in...

I had a conversation this past week with the CEO of a company that sells food waste decomposition machines. During our conversation he touted the reliability of his company’s machines from a maintenance perspective. It was a differentiator, he said, when compared to his competitors. I suspect every company in every product niche would tell you that but what stood out in our conversation was his emphasis on TCO—the notion of “total cost of ownership.”How often do you consider TCO when purchasing a green product or technology? What I mean is not only the actual upfront cost but also...