November 30th 09
One of the criticisms we often hear at The First Star is that hotels implement green initiatives when it saves them money but not when it might involve an investment.
We’re pretty sceptical of greenwash from the hotels – we think they tend to favour sustainability initiatives that save money or let them trumpet “being green” in their marketing.
By far the most common “green wash” initiative is asking guests to reuse their towel.
Don’t get us wrong, water and energy use and laundry waste are important impacts that hotels should be managing. As part of a comprehensive program we would welcome this initiative.
Its just we hear regularly from hotel workers that hotel management often don’t pay much attention to these things in the back of house.
We recently heard of a great initiative from New Zealand that gives hotels a way to show they’re sincere about their environmental efforts. Guests are offered the choice to not have their room serviced – they simply put a sign on their door handle.
Sounds familiar so far. But instead of using this to save money like most hotels do (by cutting back hours for housekeepers) for every room not cleaned the hotel allows their workers to donate their time to a local volunteer environmental initiative.
They reduce their impact, make a real contribution to their local environment (which they rely on to attract tourists) and Guests can recognise this hotel as one that is serious about being sustainable.
What do you think? Should hotels use the money they save from initiatives like towel recycling to invest in their local community?
Or should they invest it in other energy saving initiatives that cost money in the short-term?
How can we make sure these savings don’t come at the cost of workers?
November 10th 09
It seems not too much has changed in the quarter of a century since the term greenwash was first coined to describe attempts by hotels to look green.
It was the 1980’s when US environmentalist Jay Westerveld criticised hotels for advertising their towel recycling programs but shunning recycling elsewhere in their business.
The term is now used to refer to any cynical attempt by a business to cash in on environmentally conscious consumers by implementing measures that in fact save the business money.
There’s a great account of greenwash here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwash
Hotels are still amongst the worst. Every hotel asks guests to hang their towel up, few allow guests to recycle. Almost none outside of the exclusive eco category audit their recycling programs.
Despite decades of attention these big businesses still refuse to properly address their environmental impact. Ironic really given they have the most to lose from climate change (what with the risk to Australia’s natural tourist attractions).
Our attempts to raise these issues with them have fallen on deaf ears, so far. Their Association has failed to consider environmental sustainability and attacked The First Star for seeking to draw attention to their record.
By joining The First Star you’ve said you want to stay in hotels that care about their workers and their environment. Now that we’re building a community of ethical travellers we need your ideas about how we can get these hotels to change.
Many of these cahins are also responsible for terrible environmental practices elsewhere in the world. We’re working with our partners to be able to bring you more details of this sort of behaviour: http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/environmental-travel-the-greenwash-410815.html
If you want to know more about the Hotels’ Greenwash, visit our site, join the discussion.