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Less Garbage Overnight: A Waste Prevention Guide for the Lodging Industry (Executive Summary)
For many travelers, the idea of staying in a hotel or motel conjures up images of convenience, possibly even luxury. For lodging industry operators, providing the goods and services that create this image traditionally has meant handling a lot of materials - amenities ranging from tiny toiletry bottles and room service to formal dining and conference facilities. When guests check out, lodging properties are typically left holding the bag - the garbage bag.Given the rising costs of managing garbage, can the hospitality industry continue providing guests with convenience and comfort while significantly slashing its collective waste disposal bill? The answer is yes, and large and small properties across the country are already showing the way. The answer is: waste prevention.
The waste prevention solution
Simply put, waste prevention means reducing the amount and/or toxicity of materials entering the waste stream prior to recycling, treatment, or disposal. Many of the 45,000 hotels and motels across the United States have implemented recycling programs, and this is an important component of any facility's operation. But inform's research has shown that waste prevention is the first step to making the most efficient use of our valuable natural resources. Only waste prevention reduces raw material use, avoids the need for energy to manufacture or recycle products, and prevents the pollution associated with manufacturing and recycling.
Putting it into practice
Less Garbage Overnight shows lodging industry operators how to start a practical, cost-effective waste prevention program by:
- Assessing purchasing decisions
- Understanding how materials and equipment are used
- Examining the waste stream
Once a property gains a clearer picture of what waste it generates and where, it can take advantage of inform's nearly 200 hundred of waste-cutting suggestions. These are broken down into nine categories of operations:
- Guest Rooms
- Laundry and Housekeeping
- Food and Beverage Service
- Offices
- Conference Facilities
- Maintenance
- Landscaping
- Remodeling and Construction
- Purchasing
A user-friendly guide
Designed as a hands-on tool for lodging industry professionals, Less Garbage Overnight includes checklists for action in each of the above categories. It includes a special appendix on choosing less toxic products, such as paints and cleaners. And it documents the environmental and economic results of waste prevention at over 20 lodging properties in the United States and Canada. To cite just a few of these initiatives:
- At the 960-room Boston Park Plaza Hotel, installing a dispenser system for soap, shampoo, hair conditioner, body lotion, and mouthwash eliminated nearly 2 million individual plastic containers per year and saved $0.20 per occupied room per night.
- Each month, the Ritz-Carlton in Naples, Florida, avoids discarding 150 pounds of worn bath towels by converting them into cleaning rags and dishtowels for kitchen staff. Each year, the hotel makes about 800 aprons from used table linens.
- Over a two-year period, Walt Disney World restaurants donated more than 594,000 pounds of leftover food to an organization that distributes it to needy individuals.
- After the winter holiday season, Chateau Whistler, in British Columbia, replants its live (potted) Christmas trees on the resort's golf course
