Home Publisher's Point of View A Few Thoughts, News Tidbits from Cornell’s Sustainability Roundtable

A Few Thoughts, News Tidbits from Cornell’s Sustainability Roundtable

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I attended my third Sustainability Roundtable a little more than a week ago at the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University. For those of you not familiar with the event, it is a mostly annual gathering of industry representatives focused on sustainability. Folks attending tend to be corporate level sustainability leaders but there are also suppliers, students and those in academia who participate as well. The Roundtable is a forum at which research is often presented and where folks update their industry peers on their efforts to reduce waste, energy and water consumption. The event is also a setting where recent initiatives in other areas of corporate social responsibility are discussed.

At this year’s Roundtable there was some news of note to mention. Many of you are familiar with our industry’s collective effort to come up with a methodology to calculate and communicate the carbon footprint of hotel stays and meetings in a consistent and transparent way. The result of this effort, the Hotel Carbon Measurement Initiative (HCMI), was officially launched almost two years ago. Fran Hughes, Head of Programs at the International Tourism Partnership (ITP), said ITP is funding an effort to develop the Hotel Water Measurement Initiative. This effort ultimately will result in a common process for measuring water consumption in hotels. ITP was instrumental in leading the effort to create HCMI.

Many of you will recall that a lot of work was put into developing APEX/ASTM standards for nine sectors of a meeting or event. Our industry waited years for the standards to be finalized. Every now and then I learn about a facility that has earned some level of certification. For example, last summer the Oregon Convention Center achieved Level Four certification for the ASTM standard pertaining to the evaluation and selection of venues for environmentally sustainable meetings, events, trade shows and conferences. Truth be told, since the standards were finalized two years ago, I have rarely heard about a meeting facility or lodging accommodation getting certified. At the Roundtable I brought this up and quickly got the impression that the standards are not being pushed or supported by major players in our industry. I had heard about cost being an issue for some but one of the Roundtable participants just did not think the standards are easy enough to use. “Clunky” was one of the words used in our discussion. I intend to pursue this matter in another article but it is quite disappointing that our industry did not come up with green meeting standards that can be rolled out quickly, easily, and that work for everyone.

Mandatory Towel/Linen Reuse Program

In other news, Lindsay Wilkinson, Manager, Corporate Responsibility—Environmental Sustainability for InterContinental Hotels Group, said Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express properties will all have to offer a towel/linen reuse program soon.

Randy Gaines, Vice President Operations & New Projects Development-Americas, Hilton Worldwide, presented on “Best Practices in Managing Energy, Water, and Waste.” He said that lighting has proven to be the number one opportunity for energy savings for his company with heating, cooling and ventilation being number two. “We have seen a tremendous amount of return on LEDs,” Gaines said.

Gaines said team member training has been critical to the success of Hilton’s initiatives. Housekeepers, for example, are incentivized to report defects. Night walks have also been helpful in identifying opportunities for savings. Sometimes it is the security guard doing the checking for lights on that should not be on, etc.

Gaines said his company recently had to deal with a 200 percent increase in water costs in Puerto Rico. An investment in low-flow showerheads there is expected to save $1 million.

Jeanne Varney, Lecturer, Cornell University School of Hotel Administration, highlighted the results of a recent Cornell study that found that certain sustainability practices—water-conserving fixtures and towel/linen reuse programs, for example—are nearly universal in the lodging industry. A total of 100 U.S. resorts participated in the study. Click here for more information.

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