YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, CALIF.—Yosemite Lodge at the Falls, a popular year-round lodging destination in the heart of Yosemite Village, unveiled today two prototype guest rooms on the cutting edge of environmentally-friendly interior architecture and design. The two rooms at The Lodge are the first of their kind in Yosemite National Park. Reflective of Delaware North Companies’ award-winning GreenPath environmental stewardship platform, the two eco-friendly guestrooms were designed with an eye toward an eventual rollout throughout the Lodge’s 245 rooms. Every design selection, from insulation and paint to textiles and light fixtures, was evaluated based on its proximity, sustainability, recycled...

CLEVELAND, OHIO—Hasek Communications, the Cleveland, Ohio-based publisher of Green Lodging News, welcomes Blu-Drop as a Green Product & Service Directory Partner. Blu-Drop makes it easy to upgrade from a standard toilet to a dual-flush toilet without having to purchase a new toilet. The company’s easy-to-install WF-11C system is less than one-tenth the cost of a new toilet and can double the efficiency of an existing toilet. With the WF-11C system one need only replace the existing flapper and handle with the patented dual-flapper and dual-action handle. There is no need to remove the toilet tank. The WF-11C will fit nearly...

SHANGHAI—Marriott International will invest $500,000 in seed money over the next two years to support a vital water conservation program that helps protect the largest source of fresh water on the planet, located in the mountains of Southwest China. The program will focus its work in Sichuan Province, the area hit hard by the 2008 earthquake. Concurrently, Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels throughout China have committed to reducing their water and energy use by 25 percent by 2017. The program, called the “Nobility of Nature,” is designed to assist rural communities in Sichuan Province with sustainable businesses, such as mushroom farming...

HOUSTON—In an effort to even further reduce their carbon footprint, Hilton Americas-Houston, the city’s largest hotel and first Green Seal certified hotel in Texas, is now even greener with the installation of the AquaRecycle water recycling system in the hotel’s laundry. The laundry facility, covering 27,000 square feet and rivaling most commercial laundry plants in both size and capacity, is by far the largest hotel laundry in the city, washing and finishing more than 675,000 pounds of linens per month. The two Lavatec tunnel washers wash 100 pounds of linens every two and half minutes, with a maximum working capacity...

NORTH OLMSTED, OHIO—Moen Incorporated’s Commercial Division introduces M•Power, a full line of sensor-operated flush valves featuring durability, water savings and sanitary protection for commercial restrooms. The M•Power line offers a number of options, including standard flow, high efficiency, dual flush and pint flush models. All M•Power flush valves require little or no maintenance, offering lower lifetime costs for a facility. As an added benefit, installing Moen’s M•Power flush valves contributes to a building’s eligibility to obtain LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification, earning the building up to two points in the Water Use Reduction category. “M•Power...

SOUTH EGREMONT, MASS.—Monarch Bath, Bed & Spa, a leading global provider of bathrobes and luxury hotel linens, announced that they have signed an exclusive agreement with The Comphy Company to provide their eco-friendly line of bed sheets to hotel markets worldwide. Comphy sheets are the latest addition to the MONARCH ECO product line, a complete line of hotel towels, robes and sheets designed to conserve water and reduce energy costs in the laundry operation, while maximizing comfort and durability. Comphy sheets are designed to provide superior luxury for guests, while protecting the bottom line for hoteliers. Made from 100 percent...

MADISON, WIS—On the one-year anniversary of the company’s Project Green Wolf, Great Wolf Resorts, Inc., North America’s largest family of indoor waterpark resorts, continues to celebrate its distinction as the first and only national hotel chain to have all properties achieve the Green Seal certification—Silver for the lodging portion of its 10 Great Wolf Lodge brand resorts and its Blue Harbor Resort & Conference Center in the United States. Additionally, Great Wolf Lodge—Niagara Falls received a four leaf Green Leaf Eco-Rating from the Audubon Green Leaf Eco-Rating Program in Canada. In 2007, Great Wolf Resorts started reducing energy and water...

FRANKLIN, TENN.—Leak Beeper has introduced a wireless version of their patented, toilet-leak detection device. The new Leak Beeper incorporates a Synapse RF engine and network operating system to report leak indications, wirelessly and directly, to a maintenance engineer’s computer via a mesh network. The new wireless device provides a user-friendly way to proactively address toilet leaks and significantly reduce water consumption and costs. The Leak Beeper is a device that detects all of the leaks possible in a toilet’s water tank. Use of the Leak Beeper has reduced water consumption and costs by an average of 28 percent at major hotels...

MCLEAN, VA.—Following two years of testing, Hilton Worldwide has unveiled LightStay, a proprietary system developed to calculate and analyze environmental impact. In the first full year of findings, the 2009 LightStay results show that the 1,300 Hilton Worldwide properties using the system conserved enough energy to power 5,700 homes for a year, saved enough water to fill more than 650 Olympic-size pools and reduced carbon output equivalent to taking 34,865 cars off the road. Reductions in water and energy use also translated into dollars saved for hotel owners, with estimated savings of more than $29 million in utility costs...

BRADENTON, FLA.—At a time when energy costs have reached an all time high, savvy hotel and condo owners are finding highly effective ways to conserve energy and save money. By installing constant airflow regulators in bathroom and kitchen exhaust vents, owners and operators are able to accurately and automatically control the amount of heated or conditioned air that is constantly blown out of their buildings. While having the airflow automatically regulated improves the indoor air quality and enables the use of smaller high-efficiency fans, the greatest savings comes from the reduced load on a facility’s heating and cooling systems. Constant...