An open letter to hotels

(hotel name removed to protect the guilty)

Dear Every Hotel I've Ever Stayed In:

Can we talk? I know you claim that you want to help the environment and save resources by reusing towels. That's technically fair, since not washing things means you're not expending the water, electricity, and chemicals to wash and dry those things. Still, I'm going to call bullshit.

Yep. I said it. Your "environmental" claims are a sham, and not the ornamental pillow covering kind, either. I've seen this placard pop up in any number of hotels in the US and internationally. It's fine, and I usually reuse my towels anyway. Still, if you *really* cared about the environment, I'd have seen ONE hotel EVER with recycle bins in the rooms. ONE. EVER. I have not yet encountered this elusive hotel (even in eco-friendly areas), though I hear claims that they exist. Maybe there's one in Shangri-La, and it's staffed by unicorns and happy-faced gnomes.

I mean, it's not like it's much more labor intensive (if at all), and the tipping fees for recyclables are generally cheaper than tipping fees for landfill dumpsters. It's kind of a common sense thing, really.

More than that, you'd also make some effort to have more energy-efficient lighting, and every hotel room I walked into wouldn't be approximately 62 degrees in the summer or 86 degrees in the winter. Seriously. It's downright frigid.

You wouldn't keep your rooms supplied with individually-wrapped disposable nightmares, and you'd have water-efficient shower heads and low-flow toilets, and sink aerators (which I think you might occasionally have, so bravo). And why are none of the appliances in my room Energy-Star? Don't you know you can get tax breaks for Energy-Star compliance?

Anyway, there's a laundry list of other opportunities for you to improve, but for Pete's sake, these are seriously the ones that should be universal.

Anyway, I hope we can work things out.

Sincerely,

Stacie

I love the smell of old books

but this is pretty stinkin' awesome.

A few links on sustainability

On the proliferation of green ratings and accreditations, and why they're important despite being confusing. Working for a non-profit that specializes in triple bottom line certifications for small businesses and non-profits, I found this one pretty interesting.

A side-by-side comparison of the Global Reporting Initiative and the Climate Disclosure Project. Sustainability reporting standards can be confusing.

An expose on the waterless urinal, and why it hasn't caught on everywhere.

I often assume other people are familiar with the Life Cycle Analysis, and I'm often quite wrong. Here's 10 thoughts on LCAs.

"I think our problem is going to be: Are six acres enough?"

Fantastic news from out of Cleveland, with land-use management tactics that should be applied in every urban municipality.

Supply chain, manufacturing, and China

Why one 3PL thinks manufacturing has experienced, and will continue to experience, migration to China.

I think the comment at the bottom of the page is particularly interesting. As Chinese labor strikes, demanding better wages and more just working conditions, and as rent and shipping increase in cost, I wonder how whether more and more manufacturing will come back to the U.S. What will happen if this occurs? Will we face shortages of land and infrastructure? Will we face issues of lost skills in the workforce? According to a recent NYT article, signs point to yes.

At the very least, I should have an interesting career to look forward to as a supply chain professional.

The long-term effects of sleep deprivation

This explains quite a bit about my undergraduate years.

In less creepy news...

A discussion on how sustainability and energy efficiency are ultimately at odds. While I disagree that energy efficiency does nothing for the environment (the first goal of an individual or organization should always be to reduce), I do agree that the overarching goal should be a move to clean energy.

On that note, a solar plane just completed a history-making 24-hour flight. While this isn't going to revolutionize air travel tomorrow, it points to pretty awesome future potential.

And now, a final note on how the quality and sustainability movements converge. I've sort of hinted at this territory before with logistics quality, and HBR published a nice article on this in April (it's worth checking out), but it bears repeating.