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?
