SAN FRANCISCO—The InterContinental Mark Hopkins San Francisco has been named a San Francisco Green Business, making it the largest hotel by square footage and second largest building in the city to receive the recognition. Under the direction of Chief Engineer Shane Caldwell, the hotel spent more than two years working alongside the San Francisco Department of Environment to audit its existing practices and implement new programs and procedures to become a more sustainable property focusing on the areas of waste management, pollution prevention, conservation, water management, and energy efficiency. To date, the hotel has replaced more than 8,000 lightbulbs...

NEW YORK—Early-adopters of new eco-friendly wabu, affordable hand-crafted furniture pieces made entirely from reclaimed wood, can now visit getwabu.com to enter the company’s fan queue for an opportunity to earn exclusive rewards prior to wabu’s official launch on January 26, 2018. Wabu, an acronym for Wood After Being Used, is furniture made with reclaimed wood that’s handcrafted, affordable and easy-to-assemble (in less than two minutes) with no tools. Wabu will soon be available for pre-order on crowdfunding site Indiegogo. “It’s our duty to leave the planet better than we found it or at least try our best to do so,” said...

Close your eyes and throw a stick at just about every trade show lately and you are bound to hit somebody selling mattress and box spring encasements. A bit of an exaggeration I admit but there are a lot of folks selling these items and you would be wise to ask suppliers what makes their product “the right fit” for your property. I contacted a bunch of companies that sell encasements for information, but response was limited; I only managed to interview one person but there was ample information available on the companies’ websites. Mattress and box spring encasements can...

LAS VEGAS—Yesterday, MGM Resorts International, in partnership with Three Square Food Bank, announced a new standardized program for safe collection, preservation and service of surplus banquet food that will help reduce hunger in Southern Nevada. This new program, in which MGM Resorts donates surplus (prepared but unserved) hot banquet food to Three Square, is expected to provide 800,000 nutritious meals by 2020 to people combating hunger. Food insecurity is one of the most serious public health challenges in the United States, according to statistics from the United States Department of Agriculture. One in seven Americans is unable to meet their...

NEWARK, CALIF.—Mission Linen Supply, a leading provider of linens, uniforms, supplies and related services, has built and opened a new, 100,000-square-foot, LEED-certified facility in Newark, Calif. Equipped to process more than 70 million pounds of laundry each year, this new facility will enable Mission to provide efficient linen services to hospitality businesses throughout San Francisco and the surrounding areas. Leveraging more than 85 years of experience, Mission serves hospitality businesses throughout the western United States and Texas. Like other Mission locations, the Newark facility offers rental and direct-purchase products and provides laundry services for the aforementioned items as well as...

GREENWOOD VILLAGE, COLO.—Humanscale, a pioneer of ergonomic solutions for the office, is actively working to achieve a net positive impact on the environment. Its latest initiative focuses on reducing ocean plastic pollution. A charter member of the Next Wave Initiative, started by Dell and led by Adrian Grenier’s Lonely Whale, Humanscale is working with like-minded businesses and organizations to convert plastic ocean waste for product development and manufacturing. Humanscale became part of the initiative after forming a partnership with Bureo, a California-based company which repurposes plastic fishing nets from the ocean for the development of products such as skateboards and...

BENTON HARBOR, MICH.—Whirlpool Corp. has risen in the Newsweek Green Rankings to 50 and 82 on the national and global lists respectively. The rankings assess the environmental performance of the largest publicly traded companies in the United States and the world. This year, Whirlpool Corp. was classified as a “top-ranked company,” a designation awarded to fewer than 100 companies on either list. “The people at Whirlpool Corporation continuously strive to protect the planet by being more efficient in how we build innovative products that consume less energy,” said Ron Voglewede, Director of Global Sustainability for Whirlpool Corp. “This distinction is a...

NATIONAL REPORT—Been sleeping around a lot? That is what just about every hotel mattress and box springs does every night and the results can be not only unhealthy but creepy as well. Dust mites, bed bugs, other insects, bodily fluids of one kind or another—at some point in time a mattress and box springs will experience these. Mattresses, especially, impacted by such things, often are thrown away—far short of their intended life span—not recycled, and end up in the landfill. Fortunately, hoteliers can easily extend the life of a mattress and box springs with encasements that form a protective...

BANGKOK—Soneva announced that it has started recycling plastic as part of the ‘Soneva Maker Programme’. Beginning at Soneva Fushi, this programme will see Soneva join the grass-roots ‘Precious Plastic’ global initiative to increase plastic recycling, by fabricating their open source machines from locally available, low cost materials. In due course the programme will be extended so that Soneva resorts recycle plastic collected from neighboring islands as well. At Soneva Fushi’s Eco Centro, the first machine has been constructed which remolds plastic waste into fun, functional and artistic items. The Soneva Maker Programme is part of Soneva’s plan to encourage guests...

ODESSA, FLA.—Hasek Communications, the Odessa, Fla.-based publisher of Green Lodging News, welcomes Stern Engineering as a Green Product & Service Directory partner. Stern’s Touch-Free Electronic Faucets are operated by infrared sensor and automatically activate when users place their hands within the sensor range, providing cold or premixed water. The water efficient, touch free faucets automatically shut down after being used for more than 90 seconds. The faucets combine minimalistic designs with high quality materials to ensure washrooms remain hygienic, safe, cost efficient and sustainable. Customizable functions with optional remote control are sensor range, security time, delay in, delay out,...