Another unfriendly practice that we could do without is the complementary hard copy newspaper.

Twitter@JohnBergdoll

You know what chafes my ass? Little signs by air-dryers in airport bathrooms that thank you for saving the earth by not using a paper towel. As if one paper towel could begin to make up for the tons of CO2 dumped into the atmosphere through air travel…

Sigh. I suppose something is better than nothing.

Thanks for the taking the time to leave such thoughtful input. I agree with you- absolutely. And at the same time, I don’t think that this industry–or any of the other ones that are so problematic–are going to just disappear or become more altruistic.

Over the past year, I’ve spent a lot of time observing, talking with, and learning about some of the biggest hotel corporations in the world, as well as the communities where they’re located, and what I’ve learned has really surprised me. For some communities–St. Kitts is one example–the hotel industry has really propped up the local economy when all other traditional means of economic sustenance have disappeared. In St. Kitts, the sugar industry collapsed five years ago. By all accounts I listened to there, people who were already marginal (economically speaking) plunged into poverty. Several major hotels established properties on the island and are now responsible for providing employment in a small country where few stable jobs exist. In some of these hotels, employees talked about being able to finally go to college or being able to acquire jobs in management that they never would have acquired otherwise. As an outsider, I was wont to see the hotel as a negative force, one that degraded the environment and diluted the “authenticity” of local culture. But when I set aside what I expected to hear, I learned something entirely different.

Hal- It’s interesting. Some of the biggest corporate hotel chains are really taking significant leadership roles in greening the industry. But there are others who are greenwashing or who are not setting/enforcing standards for all of the hotels in their company, so it’s important for us to find and share examples of places that are really committing themselves wholly to environmentalism.

However!

Because the industry as a whole is so fundamentally buried in eco UN-friendly policies — from the way most major companies operate solely on a business-oriented plane with the focus of extracting as much as they can from their locations’ surroundings (in human labor, natural resources, etc.) to purely turn a profit…. it’s going to take a hell of a lot more than the meager suggestions you’ve outlined here for any real, lasting progress to occur.

Which leads me to my main gripe about the “green” movement in general. I get the bottoms up approach — I do — so spare me. But when dealing with such an important, pressing issue and such a vast business empire, there are much bigger aspects on which “greenification” energies should be placed….in other words, I feel like most efforts to “greenify” in general only make daily m.o.’s superficially less-harmful to the environment, doing more harm than good by focusing more on adapting, rather than changing, institutions (like hotels) to fit our modern “needs” in an eco-conscious age — when we, as eco-conscious travelers & people, should be reassessing those needs instead.