Photo: Flickr/dbking

So of all the strange reporting assignments I’ve had in my life, this has to be way up there near the top. I am sloshing around a food composting plant in the industrial heart of New Jersey, inspecting a small mountain of Terra Chips that has been dumped on the "in-take" floor, alongside Herve Houdre, the general manager of InterContinental The Barclay. The putrid smell of massive-scale food composting is seeping into my clothes. I am cutting quite an attractive image: my baggy brown pants are tucked into enormous yellow rubber boots, and I am scuffling along, trying not to fall down.

Do you ever wonder where your garbage goes? I do. And so does Houdre, which is why he is visiting the Converted Organics composting plant. He is reviewing the garbage procedures at his hotel (excuse me, "waste management," as they say in the biz). Houdre has become obsessed with garbage. Last week, he visited his current contractor's processing center and watched garbage pickers along a conveyor belt sort the refuse into plastics, glass, cardboard, leaving the unsorted trash to be sent along to landfill. It was the first time the plant had seen a general manager; the job is usually the purview of engineers. "Look, there are two issues in the hotel industry: We consume a lot of energy, and we produce a lot of garbage," Houdre said to me on the train out to the garbage plant. "We are addressing both issues."

At his former hotel, the Willard InterContinental in Washington, Houdre says, the amount of trash recycled jumped in two years from 28 tons a year to 135 tons, and the amount of food waste composted went from none in 2006 to 19 tons in 2008. Houdre plans to make the same kind of improvements at the Barclay, which he took over about six months ago.

Today, Houdre is looking at a relatively new process, the industrial-scale composting of food. It's the cutting edge of where garbage recycling is heading, because it means virtually nothing, in theory, goes to landfill. This plant only accepts food (plastic bags really gum up the system), and after about 10 days of "digesting" and processing, what comes out the other end is organic fertilizer that is sold at Whole Foods and Home Depot.

Before donning my fashion-forward yellow booties, we got a briefing from Jack Walsdorf, of the Converted Organics plant, and Christopher Balfe, from IESI-BFC Ltd. and Waste Services, which is the fourth largest waste management company in the U.S. I learned three very important takeaways.

Takeaway 1: To my amazement, I learned that it’s probably better to buy plastic bottled goods than glass bottled goods. I’ve been avoiding plastic soda bottles for the past year, thinking that plastics generally are bad. But it turns out, the value of recycled plastic—plastic today is worth about $400 a ton—is higher than the value of recycled glass. And so it’s more likely that a plastic bottle will get recycled than a glass one. "More than 50 percent of glass picked up off the street goes to landfill," says Balfe, a Cornell School of Hotel Management graduate and recycling consultant, who is helping IESI develop its composting business. "But as the market shifts and prices goes up or down, that will change again."

Takeaway 2: The garbage I carefully separate into plastic, glass, and paper actually does get recycled. I saw the recycling plant—it's Sims Metal Management, which you can read about in this WNYC report from 2008, when the contract was awarded—with my very own eyes, just across the fence from another paper recycling plant. I hope to visit it sometime soon to learn what actually happens to my trash. (Stay tuned for that post.)

Takeaway 3: If a garbage (excuse me, "waste management") company says it is sorting and recycling a hotel company’s garbage, the chances are, only about 15-20 percent actually gets recycled. This is a big deal: an average hotel room in New York City produces 2.2 tons of garbage a year. If only a small percent of that gets recycled, then a heck of a lot is going out to landfill.

Previously in Operation Green Hotel, Do the Right Thing examined the greening of the staff, the hard work of the paper police, and the vagaries of bamboo bedding.

If you're looking for evidence that travelers care about the environment and social responsibility when they take trips, check out Travelocity's hotel bookings in the first quarter: green hotel bookings are up a remarkable 65 percent. And the growing interest in social responsibility seems to be here to stay.

Travelocity now flags "green" hotels that are certified by credible sustainable tourism certification outfits—led by EC3 Global, one of the world's leading certification programs.

Here's the press release:

TRAVELOCITY EXPANDS ITS GREEN HOTEL OFFERINGS IN ASIA-PACIFIC
 
Through new relationship with EC3 Global, Travelocity now shows additional green hotels in the Asia Pacific region and beyond.
 
Southlake, Texas- Is green going mainstream? Travelocity reports green hotel bookings in the first quarter were 65% higher than their non-green counterparts. And now the company has formed a relationship with EC3 Global--the world’s largest certifier of sustainable travel and tourism organizations--to show consumers sustainable hotels throughout Asia-Pacific .         
In this era of eco-confusion, Travelocity works hard to highlight earth-friendly hotels across its site and guards against green-washing with its rigorous program. Unlike some travel sites, Travelocity does not accept “self-certified” hotels for the Green Hotel Directory. “It’s important that our eco-friendly leaf icon in the hotel shopping path is a symbol consumers can trust,” says Alison Presley, manager of Travelocity’s Travel for Good program. “There is no way to verify that a self-certified hotel is truly sustainable. And we know our consumers depend on us to hold the line against green-washing.”
 
To date, Travelocity has flagged more than 1,900 hotels site-wide with the eco-friendly leaf and the company works with an elite group of certification programs. To have its hotels included in the Green Hotel Directory, a certification program must have a checklist that closely aligns with the Global Sustainable Tourism Criteria. The criteria was developed by the Tourism Sustainability Council, a global coalition of U.N. bodies, research and academic institutions, social and environmental NGOs, certification programs, and it offers a comprehensive picture of what it means to be sustainable.
 
Through EC3 Global Travelocity is able to flag hotels in destinations like Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, China, and more. Each of these properties has been audited by a qualified third-party professional who checks the effectiveness of sustainable practices applied. EC3 Global manages the EarthCheck Certification and Benchmarking Program, which is used by more than 1,000 organizations in over 60 countries. It was designed specifically for sustainable travel and uses the latest science and technology.
 
Travelocity doesn’t just promote eco-friendly products--the company is also working hard to reduce its own footprint and to promote sustainability within the travel industry. The company’s sustainability efforts start at home with its LEED-certified Silver headquarters. And to date, Travelocity and its customers have helped The Conservation Fund plant more than 21,000 trees across three national wildlife refuges that will trap an estimated 23,000 metric tons of CO2 over the life of those forests. The company is also a founding member of the Tourism Sustainability Council, which is working toward a more sustainable future for the industry.
 
About Travelocity Global
Travelocity® is committed to being the traveler's champion -- before, during and after the trip - and provides the most comprehensive and proactive guarantee in the industry (www.travelocity.com/guarantee). This customer-driven focus, backed by 24/7 live phone support, competitive prices and powerful shopping technology has made Travelocity one of the largest travel companies in the world. Travelocity owns and operates: Travelocity Business® for corporate travel; igougo.com, a leading online travel community; lastminute.com, a leader in European online travel; and ZUJI, a leader in Asia-Pacific online travel. Travelocity is owned by Sabre Holdings Corporation, a world leader in travel marketing and distribution.
 
About EC3 Global
 
EC3 Global is the world's largest certifier of sustainable travel and tourism operators. With more than 1000 clients in over 60 countries, the company’s EarthCheck Program responds directly to the major environmental problems facing the planet, including climate change, waste reduction and non-renewable resource management. It provides benchmarking, certification and performance improvement systems that result in average savings of 30 per cent for energy and waste stream, and 20 per cent savings for water consumption. Go to www.earthcheck.org  or   www.ec3global.com

Mary J. Blige is pushing it. Spike Lee is pushing it. President Bill Clinton is pushing it. And the travel industry is pushing it. The initiative, promoted in a star-studded video (see above), is called MASSIVEGOOD, and it was launched on March 4 at the United Nations. (Check out this star-studded report.) Now the Global Business Coalition on HIV/Aids, Malaria and Tuberculosis, which just held its annual summit in Washington this week, is driving it even further, with a new corporate initiative.

The idea is that if the travel industry reaches out to its huge audience—we travelers book some 2 billion airline trips a year—and asks for just $2 each to fight disease each time we travel, then we can change the world.  “This is an opportunity for very small actions that can make a huge difference,” said Bernard Salome, Managing Director of the Millennium Fund, which is managing this initiative.

The major companies involved in travel management—booking engines, such as American Express, Carlson Wagonlit Travel, and BCD—have signed on to support MASSIVEGOOD, which means that down the road, if you book travel through them, they will ask if you are willing to contribute $2. Travelocity is about to launch the initiative, too. If you go onto the MASSIVEGOOD website, you can contribute now.

At the GBC summit today, David Alport, director of GBC’s travel programs, launched the corporate program, which is where the greatest promise lies. The goal is for companies to sign up and agree to let their employees make a $2 contribution every time they make a business trip. Says Salome: “Travel accounts for some 10 percent of the world’s GDP, and employs 220 million people. If we can motivate these people to participate, then we have a whole new game. This is a game changer.” So keep an eye out for MASSIVEGOOD, because it is just that: massively good.

I try to offset my carbon emissions when I go on vacation, but I find it confusing to learn that some offsets are better than others. Gary Gero, a carbon offsets expert and president of the Climate Action Reserve, a nonprofit that registers and issues carbon offsets, has written up some smart advice on how to decipher which programs are legitimate and which are not.  I thought I'd share them with you:

1. Trains, planes or automobiles: No matter what mode of transportation you might be heading out in, calculating your carbon footprint is the first step in managing your travel.  Find an online carbon footprint calculator by a simple Google search and input your travel details to find out how much carbon your trip will emit and how many offsets you need to buy.

2. Read the fine print: Because offsets are intangible purchases, it is important that offset retailers make detailed information readily available to show that the offsets they are selling are real and aren’t being sold more than once. Each credit should have a unique serial number and information such as the date, location and source of the greenhouse gas reduction.

3. Seek a second opinion: Only buy offsets that have been reviewed by an independent party to verify they are legitimate.  Verifiers physically inspect the offset project and review records, data, equipment and activities to ensure that greenhouse gas reduction claims have actually occurred and have been counted accurately. This information should be available to the public.

4. Look for a seal of approval: The carbon market has matured considerably since the days when it was dubbed The Wild West.  There are now a number of organizations that give offsets the equivalent of the USDA organic seal of approval. Look for offset credits that have been issued by the Climate Action Reserve, the Gold Standard or Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS).

5. Find a project that sparks your interest:  There are a wide range of activities that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and generate offsets, including planting trees, converting food waste into energy, trapping methane from farms and destroying ozone depleting substances. Many of these projects also have numerous benefits to their communities. Find a project that sparks your interest so that your offset purchase is more meaningful to you.

6. When in doubt: If you are not sure the offsets you are purchasing are top quality, you can find a list of reputable offset retailers at http://www.climateactionreserve.org/how/retailers/

It turns out that saving the planet can have some unexpected and wonderful side-benefits.

I don’t know about you, but I never really thought much about how much paper a hotel uses. A lot, as it turns out. Before the InterContinental Barclay Hotel’s “Paper to Go” committee cracked down, the place went through as much as three reams of paper—some 1500 sheets—a day.

The biggest offenders: the Finance and Food & Beverage Departments, both of which relied on an antiquated system of nightly paper printouts that reported the day’s business. 

“Ninety percent of the people in this hotel have no desire to save paper whatsoever,” Michael Parisse,  told me the other day, as he walked me through his plans to take the hotel paper-free. “This is all about education.” (Easy for HIM to give up paper, I thought: he’s the I.T. guy!)

As a leading member of the Paper to Go committee, Parisse is the Barclay’s top paper cop, and from what I can tell, his crackdown has been ruthless. He banned the nightly print outs. He removed copy machines. He monitors how many copies each employee makes. “We’re not trying to get people in trouble or anything,” he told me. But if someone is making twice as many copies as everybody else, he comes calling. The measures have met some resistance. “It took some arm twisting,” Parisse says with a grin. “People were saying ‘I can’t do my job.’ For 20 years, they had been doing it one way, and now they had to change.”

Exhibit A: Carlos Vega, a soft-spoken finance department veteran who runs the hotel’s payroll system. Viega recalls “not liking the medicine.” “I said, Michael, I need this!” he remembers. But Parisse has his ways; eventually, he persuaded Vega that electronic versions are just as good as paper. “I have a different stance now,” Vega, says. “I have adapted, and now I can help others go forward.”  Vega now thinks twice about printing documents, adding that if he prints one unnecessarily, “I think oh, man, I messed up!” 

Listening to Parisse and Vega, I have to admit that I am starting to feel a little guilty, too. As a magazine editor, I print documents all day long. When I misplace a story I printed out a few days ago, I print it again. I’m no better than…the Barclay’s Finance and Food & Beverage Departments! I’m going to call Vega next week—and maybe Chef Carmine, too—to get some counseling on how to start my own paper detox program.

Vega is calculating exactly how much paper the hotel is saving—and what that translates into in saved trees. (I will let you know when the report is ready.) “I saw how much waste there was,” he told me. “I’m a tree lover myself. This has really changed the way I think and behave.”

Previously in Operation Green Hotel
Bewildered by bamboo, Shower heads were sexy, shrimp went sustainable, and the hotel had a bright idea about light bulbs.

Photo: Flickr/pedrosimoes7

Here's a really cool announcement from a great travel company that recognizes that power of travel to transform people. Context Travel’s Foundation for Sustainable Travel and the St. Hope Public Schools, in Sacramento, California, just announced the winners of their annual travel scholarship: senior Kaneisha King and junior Kathleen Snook. The girls will get the chance to experience Context's carefully curated, educational walking tours during their trip to Europe.

The company said:

The two students, selected from a larger group of applicants, will be traveling to Rome, Florence and Paris with a chaperone. During their time in Europe they will be on a busy schedule of two walking seminars per day, learning about history, art, architecture, and society. Each student will be expected to keep a blog journal during the trip and prepare a final project, relevant to the trip, that will be presented to the school in August 2010.

This travel scholarship is underwritten by the Context Foundation for Sustainable Travel, a 501c3 charitable organization that promotes cultural preservation and equitable travel opportunities in such cultural capitals as Florence, Rome, London, New York, and Paris. In 2009, Context Travel and the Foundation for Sustainable Travel were recognized by National Geographic’s Geotourism Challenge as an outstanding leader in sustainable travel, the only urban-based travel company to receive recognition. The purpose of the scholarship is to give high-achieving high school students from economically challenged inner city neighborhoods the opportunity to travel abroad and work with professors from universities.

Kaneisha and Kathleen were selected by a panel of judges comprised of teachers and advisors from Sac High and Context Travel. In preparation for the trip they have been following workshops, taking extra classes on art, history and mythology, and honing their writing skills.

"We were given an incredible opportunity, and we are going to make the best of it," said Kathleen Snook, winner of the 2010 Scholarship." I have never been out of the country, and the idea of traveling to Europe and learning about a different culture, history and society was unthinkable until a few months ago."

As part of the project, students will participate in a one-day writing workshop with travel writer Susan Van Allen. They will also be enrolled in a 12 week Matador U Travel Writing Program.

Congratulations, Kaneisha and Kathleen!

You may have read on this blog not long ago that New York’s The Barclay hotel, a grand old dame that until recently knew nothing from sustainability, is striving to make all its purchases—from fish and dairy products to sheets and towels—environmentally responsible. The housekeeping department recently told me that a textiles company had presented its cotton- and eucalyptus-blend and bamboo rayon sheets, only to be sent away to work on the quality by the hotel’s demanding green GM, Herve Houdre. “The sheets weren’t crisp, they were just too soft,” Houdre told me.

Baffled by the organics on offer in my very own Garnet Hill catalogue, I was intrigued by the pros and cons of cotton vs. organic cotton, eucalyptus and bamboo—and by the fact that the sheets were being made in India. So I decided to track down the sheet company to get a better understanding of what is entailed in making those crisp linens.

I got Sid Rabin, a passionate environmentalist with a broad Chicago accent, on the line. It turns out that the company he works for, Welspun, is one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of textiles; the company, which is based in India, has a serious commitment to social responsibility and has spent years developing "sustainable fabrics." According to Rabin, the hospitality industry’s interest in eco-friendly fabrics has sprung up only in the last couple of years. “I’m spending a huge amount of time on it these days,” Rabin told me.

Making an environmentally responsible sheet, it turns out, is a tricky business, with no easy answers. Cotton production, unfortunately, uses a huge amount of water, not to mention pesticides and chemical fertilizers. Organic cotton may pollute less, but it is much more expensive. (It grows much more slowly without the pesticides and fertilizers.) A few years ago, the green movement jumped on bamboo, which grows like a weed (sometimes as much as four feet a day), as the sustainable solution. Eucalyptus, which also grows wild, has been viewed as an alternative to cotton, too.

But according to the Daily Green, to make rayon fabric from bamboo and eucalyptus, it turns out the natural fibers have to go through a toxic chemical process that is dangerous to workers and bad for the environment.

What to do? “My mantra is baby steps,” says Rabin. “You keep moving forward. If you don’t make a step forward, then nothing gets done.” Now he really gets going. “I’ve seen too many people who have used “small increments of success” as an excuse to not move at all.  Look, it’s going to get better. Competition will drive a better, cleaner way of doing this.” In other words, partly sustainable is a lot better than not sustainable at all.

I’ll buy that. Rabin’s hope is that he can help create a market for bamboo and eucalyptus fabrics—more sustainable than cotton—by persuading hotels like The Barclay to buy his sheets and towels, and then their parent companies like the hotel chain InterContinental, to buy them, then the real power player, Avendra, will be converted, too.

That’s when the game would really change. Avendra is a huge procurement cooperative set up less than a decade ago by Marriott, Hyatt, Fairmont, InterContinental, and other hotel chains, with the idea that by grouping together, they could negotiate better prices. “We will watch this market for sustainability grow,” says Rabin. “The customers will ask for it, and then my company will start making more and more.”

The lesson I take away is that this process of going green is a messy business. There will be mistakes along the way. But if companies are transparent and earnest in what they are trying to achieve, I believe that consumers will forgive mistakes. And inch by inch, the world will be a greener place.

Previously in Operation Green Hotel
Shower heads were sexy, shrimp went sustainable, and the hotel had a bright idea about light bulbs.

Paul Brown, the dashing president of Hilton Worldwide's Global Brands and Commercial Services, came by the other day to show us his company's new measurement tool, called LightStay, which will be used across the brand to monitor and reduce consumption. Sitting around our conference table, we got into an interesting conversation about leadership and doing the right thing.

First, the new Hilton system: Many, even most, of the big hotel chains now use software programs to monitor energy, water, and waste, but as far as we know, Hilton is the first big chain to demand that all its 3,600 properties, including franchisees, report into the system. The company has committed to a 20 percent reduction of carbon emissions by 2014, using 2008 as a base, and to a 10 percent reduction of water consumption. That's impressive stuff: it saves money for the company, and it's also really good for the planet.

"Just as companies are asking their vendors about sustainability, it's only a matter of time until the travel companies are held up to the same standards," Brown said. "So the mandate is to measure."

That's terrific, because the experts all say that you can't effectively reduce consumption unless you know what you are actually consuming. Hilton's system examines consumption on a more "granular" level than measurement tools used by other companies, according to Christopher Corpuel, who heads up the company's sustainability efforts. That means even looking at every aspect of a hotel's operations, including such things as cars kept idling outside the hotel's doors.

So is Hilton ready to really lead on sustainability issues? How far ahead of the pack is the company—of any other big travel company—willing to go?

READ MORE >>

Spending this morning in Manhattan's hallowed 21 Club seems about as un-Earth Day as you get, but given the company, I can't think of anywhere else I would rather have been.  I had the honor to moderate a special Conde Nast Traveler World Savers breakfast with the rather weighty title "Doing the Right Thing Now, Social Responsibility in the Post-Recession Period."  Whew!  Since we are all friends on this blog, let me just simplify this "panel-speak" to "how can one be a good corporate citizen when your bottom line is going to hell."

Answering that question was a collection of panelists with whom I would love to share a fox hole in these crazy times.  Take a look at the photo above.  Just right of me--I am the cute one in glasses BTW--sat Abby Joseph Cohen, President, Goldman Sachs Global Markets Institute.  And next to Abby, David Barber, President and Co-Owner of Blue Hill and Blue Hill at Stone Barns, a leader in sustainable (and yummy!) food.  And just to the right of David Barber, fans of this blog may recognize Herve Houdre, general manager of InterContinental The Barclay and star of our series, Operation Green Hotel.

Now what possibly can a banker, a restaurateur and a hotel manager have to say about social responsibility?  A lot!