You know the way hotels stock their mini-bars with plastic water bottles? Well next time you take a swig, think about these alarming facts:

• Americans use 2,500,000 plastic bottles every hour, and most of them are thrown away.
• Fewer than 20 percent of the plastic bottles used in the U.S. get recycled.
• Some 38 million plastic bottles go to the dump per year from bottled water (and that’s not including soda)
• Plastic bottles take 700 years to begin composting.
• Not to mention the fact that, according to online environmental website Green Upgrader, 24 million gallons of oil are needed to produce a billion plastic bottles.

For years, hotel companies have avoided the plastic bottle issue for fear of alienating their demanding guests. True, some hotels have started offering carafes of filtered water in restaurants—certainly progress. But most still offer plastic bottles—a hefty source of revenue—in the rooms. (For tips on how to get those bottles out of your office, check out this website.)

So how nice it is to report that RockResorts, a division of Vail Resorts Hospitality, has decided to do its part to put an end to all that waste by eliminating almost all plastic water bottles—as many as 640,000 bottles a year—at its eight resorts. Instead, each room will be supplied with two complimentary carafes of filtered water, which will be refilled twice a day. For $4, guests can buy a reusable stainless steel bottle, which they can refill at water stations all around the properties. The company's Pines Lodge has pioneered the program, which will be rolled out at its other hotels this spring, and then at the rest of Vail Resorts' properties.

The water initiative is part of a broader environmental program at RockResorts. The company “greened” all its hotel rooms this past year, with an opt-out linen reuse program, corn-plastic key cards, in-room recycling, energy-efficient lighting, and low-flow water fixtures. “The water bottles were inconsistent with telling people we are committed to the environment,” says Julie Klein, director of environmental affairs with Rock Resorts/Vail Resorts Hospitality. “So the question is, how can you balance the guest experience with trying to do a good job on expectations that you are environmentally sensitive?”

Many hotels run into resistance to getting rid of bottled water from their food and beverage departments, because of the loss of revenue. Pines Lodge, which is in Beaver Creek, Colorado, got around that problem by offering refillable, bottomless carafes of filtered still or carbonated water in its restaurants, at half the price of bottled water. (Free tap water is available too.) Conferences presented another challenge. “Our people got creative,” Klein says. The hotel now offers carafes of water flavored with grapefruit and cucumber. “The loss of revenue was an issue,” Klein adds, “but we just said, ‘we’ll figure it out.’”

FEED Projects co-founders Lauren Bush and Ellen Gustafson in Rwanda, 2008
Photo: FEED Projects LLC

Have you seen those gorgeous FEED bags, made out of organic cotton and burlap, around town? We think they’re incredibly chic. The company, launched three years ago by George W niece Lauren Bush and partner Ellen Gustafson, sells bags with a higher calling: based on the same one-for-one idea as TOMS Shoes, which gives away a pair of shoes for every pair purchased, FEED gives money to feed one child in school (through the UN World Food Program school feeding program) for a year for every bag sold.

Now, FEED is responding to the crisis in Haiti, with a brilliant initiative that will help combat the donor fatigue that so often sets in a few months after a humanitarian crisis. For every $60 FEED 1 (which feeds one kid in school for a year) and $100 FEED 2 bag (which feeds two kids in school for a year) sold on the company's website, donations will go to the FEED Haiti Campaign to ensure school feeding for Haitian children. The program will launch in June, just around when the world may start forgetting the tragedy in Haiti.

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Carmine Marletta, Executive Chef at the InterContinental The Barclay New York




“I’m in bed with the CleanFish Alliance!” Carmine is telling me, in his tiny, cluttered office just off the kitchen of The Barclay New York hotel. “You gotta taste this!” The chef, who keeps a closely cropped, skinny goatee and is wearing a monogrammed white cook’s tunic, hands me a small dish of shrimp cooked with English peas, peppers, and Thai chili sauce. I taste a few, and they are sublime—fresh and tender. “Is that sweet or what?” he asks, with a triumphant grin.

But it’s not just the flavor that Carmine finds thrilling. He has now pulled out a folder full of pamphlets about his suppliers, most of whom, as of a month or so ago, are “sustainable.” The fruits and vegetables they sell are organic, the meat and poultry haven’t been pumped up with hormones and antibiotics, and, in the case of the shrimp I have just tasted, the seafood is sustainably fished. (There is a whole movement around sustainable food; you can read about it on change.org). Carmine is leaning forward in his swivel chair, pointing out a document that he has highlighted with a yellow magic marker: according to CleanFish, these shrimp have been raised in an inland, closed-loop aquaculture system that “leaves nearby coastlines and mangroves untouched.”
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Photo: robinh00d / CC BY-ND 2.0

Should a travel company stop what it's doing when crisis erupts—sacrificing its business for the sake of altruistic recovery efforts? Where does a company's responsibility begin and end? 

Video: Seven days without food or water, an 8 year old boy and his 10 year old sister are rescued by the Americans and brought to an Israeli Defense Force Field Hospital
Tim Peters / Reuters

Complete Haiti Coverage on Truth.Travel

Marc Asnin and Joshua Herman were working on a book about the work of the Chabad rabbis, to commemorate the Chabad victims in the terrorist attacks on Mumbai. They heard that the Chabad rabbi in the Dominican Republic would be heading to Haiti to help and flew there to meet him.

We drove all night to meet the rabbi at the Haitian border. Before dawn we headed into Haiti, not knowing what to expect, with the sole mission of finding the incoming Israeli Defense Force team and the ambassador accompanying them. With a UN escort leading the way, we passed through the crumbled streets of Port Au Prince, slowly making our way to the airport to join the Israeli soldiers flying in to setup a field hospital.
 
We were invited to join the Israelis and soon found ourselves in the midst of an operation to build a fully functioning field hospital aimed at tackling the innumerable injuries. By 8 a.m. the next morning, after setting up the hospital throughout the night, patients began arriving in mass, mangled with wounds now three days old.  Hour by hour patients continued pouring in, as medics and surgeons worked round the clock to treat and release the wounded, making room for the injured waiting outside the gates.
 
Through the night we could hear the wails of the injured as the Israelis continued operating without stop.  The next day we set out into the city with the Chabad chaplain of the Israeli Defense Force to assess the damage and see where help was most needed. We saw a city laid in ruins and a disaster of overwhelming proportions. Thousands aimlessly walked the streets, collectively mourning the loss of life as they once knew it. Building after building lay in rubble, entombing the bodies of family and friends as the living collected around once familiar sites staring with disbelief and despair.
 
Our translator, a young man named Bema we hired off the streets, mentioned to us that he had just lost his father three days earlier in the earthquake.  The ease with which he told us this is a testament to the fortitude of the Haitian people.  The suffering is collective; no reason to place one’s suffering above others.  He offered to take us to see his home, half destroyed, and meet the survivors of his family.
 
Drouillard, a housing project in Port au Prince, was left relatively unscathed by the earthquake, but half of Bema’s home had been destroyed. We were greeted by his mother and siblings. They spoke of the loss of their patriarch and their way of life and spoke candidly of the the desperation that now defines their life and their people. They plead for the rest of the world to not forget the Haitian people. They express sincere gratitude for the help that has arrived, for the journalists telling their stories, and pray that they will not be forgotten with the passage of time.  Their appeal can be heard in the video above.

Complete Haiti Coverage on Truth.Travel

More Reporting on Haiti from the editors of Condé Nast Traveler
* Clive Irving asks: "Where are the Americans?" (part 1 and part 2)
* When Kevin Doyle visited Haiti in February 2009 with Population Services International, he saw a country of "crippling poverty."  Post-quake, Doyle hopes that Americans  "realize just how close to home Haiti really is, and how desperately it needs our help."
* How to Help Haiti:  A list of organizations on the ground
* How to support the work of Condé Nast Traveler partner Population Services International with their work in Haiti
* Cruise Haiti?  A question posed to readers          

Here’s an ethical dilemma. The 4,370-berth luxury cruiseliner, Independence of the Seas, owned by Royal Caribbean International, made anchor at a heavily guarded resort on the north coast of Haiti on Friday, just sixty miles from the devastated earthquake zone, so its guests could have rum drinks delivered to their hammocks and frolic in the crystal blue waters.

It sounds sickening—reveling at the beaches of Labadee, the enclave leased by the cruise line, while the dead bodies are piling up. But Royal Caribbean says its ship is carrying some food aid, and it says it will donate all proceeds of the visit to Haiti’s recovery. And Haiti’s UN special envoy argues that Labadee needs the revenue from the stopovers.

On The Informer, our sister blog, Condé Nast Traveler's Kevin Doyle is asking readers: Would you be comfortable drinking a beer and working on your tan on a Haitian beach next week, even if the ship you arrived on was delivering relief supplies?

Have an opinion?  Jump on over to The Informer and join the conversation.

Complete Haiti Coverage on Truth.Travel 

Contribute to Population Services International's work in Haiti

Condé Nast Traveler is proud or our partnership with Population Services International (we co-founded the Condé Nast Traveler Five & Alive Fund, which provides medications, bed nets, safe drinking water, and food supplements that help keep children healthy around the world).

We thought it was important to update you on PSI’s work in Haiti following the devastating earthquake that destroyed millions of homes in and around the capital, Port-au-Prince. PSI is currently assessing the full impact of the earthquake on the general population and on the 80 PSI/Haiti staff members working in the country.  At the same time, PSI and partners are mobilizing support for the millions affected.

PSI’s top priority, beyond caring for the immediate needs of local staff, is to ensure that there is an ongoing supply of safe drinking water in the country. While not a disaster relief organization, PSI has been working in Haiti for more than 20 years and has developed the capacity to distribute mass quantities of life-saving health products in hard to reach areas and in the most difficult of conditions.  They are deploying a specific response team to Haiti and reinforcing their team in the Dominican Republic in order to allow them to scale up relief and recovery efforts quickly and effectively.

We are asking you to consider supporting PSI in this effort. PSI is currently accepting monetary contributions.

All donations received will help PSI and its partners provide life-saving products to clean and sanitize local water supplies along with general humanitarian relief for earthquake victims as they transition from basic survival to recovery. Every little bit counts, for as little as 50¢ PSI can purchase the water treatment needed to provide a family with clean drinking water for one month.For more information on PSI’s efforts in Haiti, please visit www.psi.org.

Thank you for your support.

Complete Haiti Coverage on Truth.Travel

Herve Houdre of InterContinental The Barclay New York




"We have incredible power! We touch 320,000 customers a year. We have the power to talk to them! We—you—can change the way they see the world!" Herve Houdre, the elegant new general manager of InterContinental The Barclay, is standing at a lectern before a roomful of more than 50 staffers: maids and janitors in uniform, managers in suits, a couple of security guards, and two chefs in tall white chefs' hats.
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I don't know about you, but my living room looked like a David Lynch movie after I changed the light bulbs from incandescents to CFLs. Either that or a ghost movie. I had to change them back.
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