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Thanks to a $14 million renovation, the Sheraton Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia will be at the forefront of environmental design in the hospitality market. Set to open by the end of this year, the 192-room hotel will occupy part of the 72-year old, 17-story mixed use Rittenhouse Regency building. The hotel is making indoor air quality (IAQ) one of its hallmarks. Its ventilation system will provide filtered outside air to occupied rooms 24 hours a day. Smoking will be prohibited throughout the hotel. Materials were selected with IAQ in mind, including paint and carpeting. Furniture is made from certified wood and only water-based glues are used. The bed sheets and curtains are made from organic cotton. At the center of the six-story atrium will be 60-foot bamboo trees. Bamboo was chosen because they take in carbon dioxide and produce oxygen at a 35 percent higher rate than most other plants. “When a person is having breakfast in the atrium, the high amount of oxygen makes it feel like a ski mountain,” says Barry Dimson, president of EcoSmart Properties, one of developers. Lobby flooring is also made from bamboo. Dimson says because they were able to market these features, the hotel […]
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Germantown, Wisconsin officials are looking for a developer for a conservation subdivision deserving of national recognition. The Conservation Fund offered assistance in the project design and will promote it as a model for protecting water quality in the Great Lakes region. “I hope it will change the way we do business,” says village planner Sig Strautmanis, “convincing us to use smaller lots and protect more open space.” Financial incentives are available – sewer-service area calculations will be based on total site size even though much of it will be preserved. The Conservation Fund has a two-year, $275,000 grant from the Great Lakes Protection Fund to set up conservation subdivisions in three Great Lakes communities. Two projects are already underway in Huron, Ohio and Niles, Michigan. The Conservation Fund’s sustainable community efforts: [sorry this link is no longer available] Source: GreenClips
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Sun Power Electric, the world’s first all-solar electric utility, and Green Mountain Energy will cooperatively develop solar energy infrastructure in Pennsylvania. The first plant, to be built and owned by Sun Power, will be a 50kW plant near Philadelphia. Green Mountain Energy will purchase its output. It is expected to begin production this spring. As more customers sign on for renewable electricity products, they will build more capacity. The goal is to establish the largest network of solar plants in the eastern United States.
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The U.S. EPA released a report, “Characterization of Building-Related Construction and Demolition Debris in the United States.” C&D debris is produced at a volume of 136 million tons per year and 65-85 percent is landfilled. The report categorizes the total into residential and non-residential waste and by source – construction, renovation, or demolition. Download the EPA report The National Association of Home Builders Research Center and EPA have a case study, “Deconstruction – Building Disassembly and Material Salvage: The Riverdale Case Study.” Download it from the Smart Growth Network “Residential Construction Waste Management: A Builder’s Field Guide” is available from NAHB-RC: 800 898 2842
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Managed care and reduced costs are encouraging a return to reprocessing surgical instruments instead of throwing them away. Health care facilities cleaned and sterilized most instruments in-house until the 1970s, when manufacturers started producing single-use medical devices. This eliminated labor costs involved in internal reprocessing. Now, HMOs are changing the routine. Healthcare facilities are looking for ways to reduce costs associated with providing services. One way is to use reprocessed medical instruments. Surgical nurses separate the instruments, grossly decontaminate them, and ship them to a decontamination plant. They are sold back to the hospital at a significant discount. Brown-Ferris Industries (BFI) and Alliance Medical Corp. have entered into an agreement to serve hospitals nationwide. Alliance decontamination facilities will be located at or near BFI treatment and transfer locations. Recycling is slated to begin near Orlando, Florida. With the addition of this service, BFI can offer hospitals the full spectrum of recycling services.
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Hot on the heels of the recent Clinton administration mandate to federal agencies that all copier paper bought by the government include at least 30% recycled fiber (up from 20%), a report shows that Uncle Sam isn’t the only one who’s having a hard time buying recycled. Despite purchasing preference laws in 47 states, “Only a handful of dedicated states (with paid staffs) are making progress in buying products with recycled content,” according to Purchasing Preferences for Recycled Products. Overall state government and private sector purchases of recycled paper and plastic products have declined since the early 1990s. Moreover, “despite enthusiasm from many of the Fortune 500 for money-saving waste-reduction programs,” the author found that “manufacturers are not making much of an effort to use the more challenging materials” — namely, recycled plastics. Cooking the Numbers? In many cases, companies and governments take credit for buying recycled packaging and products they would have bought anyway because the goods had long contained recycled material. Recycled asphalt, aluminum cans, and steel, for example, are often touted when promoting buy-recycled efforts. While technically correct, such products do nothing to shore up shaky markets for products made from recycled paper or plastics, among other […]
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On the heels of BPs announcement that it will cut its greenhouse-gas emissions 10 percent by 2010, Shell pledged the same cuts by 2002. BP is making a major commitment to solar energy, and now, so is Shell. Both companies plan to improve efficiency throughout operations, and reduce venting and flaring of natural gas in exploration and production activities. Shell is making a $500 million investment in renewable energy resources, and, according to Willem-Jan van Wijk, director of Shell’s solar power division, the company aims to capture about 20 percent of the international commercial market for rural solar electricity systems, worth an estimated $1.1 billion, over the next five years. Eskom, the South African national electricity utility, and Shell International Renewables, are cooperating on a R130 million solar power project which will provide electricity to 50,000 rural households in South Africa over the next two years. Customers will pay R180 (about US$30; worth US$864)) for installation and R48 (US$8) for a monthly maintenance fee to power the equivalent of four lights and a black a[nd white TV for six hours. “This is the largest commercial, solar rural electrification project ever, he said. At a local level, it will provide opportunities […]
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Worldwatch Institute has released a study, The Natural Wealth of Nations: Harnessing the Market for Environment. While ending unnecessary subsidies to the energy, forestry, and fisheries industries would save US$650 billion in taxes, adding a modest levy for pollutant releases and resource depletion would add $1.5 trillion to the tax income. As a result, a U.S. family of four could have tax cuts of $2,000 per year. In the 1990s, China cut subsidies for fossil fuel consumption from $26 billion to $11 billion a year. The U.K. cut subsidies for coal production by 91 percent. Germany used taxes to cut production of toxic wastes by 15 percent in three years. Australia, Denmark and the U.S. used taxes on CFCs to help phase out these chemicals. For a copy contact mcaron@worldwatch.org http://www.worldwatch.org
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For the first time, the environment was prominent on the agenda of the Caribbean Hotel Industry Conference. It was standing room only at the Environmental Seminars in Nassau, Bahamas. There were workshops on waste management, energy efficiency, and green management. Technologies such as wind and solar power, recycling machinery and energy efficient lighting were featured at the trade show.
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The Buy Recycled Business Alliance (BRBA) is directing its message to the top CEOs of Fortune 1000 companies. BRBA, part of the National Recycling Coalition, is creating a six-page “cover wrap” to promote its initiatives. Starting with the November/December issue, it will be bound around the outside of each issue of the Harvard Business Review that is sent to the CEOs for the next year. “We’re hitting just the CEOs with the mailing, hoping s/he will adopt the message and drive it through the entire company,” says Will Ferretti, NRC executive director. The first four pages are about saving natural resources and an introduction to what “buy recycled” means. The last two pages include ads from BRBA member companies. Future editions may focus on new technologies and business-related topics.
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