10 of America's greenest hotels

By Richard Morgan

updated 6:09 p.m. ET March 20, 2007

Let’s face it — hotels are wasteful: room after room of fresh bedding, tiny soaps, shower heads closer akin to fire hoses, copies of USA Today you never requested and may never read. Sure, notices in the bathroom say that if you care about the Earth you can request your towels not be changed. And what happens? Housekeeping changes them anyway.

But change was afoot even before the release of "An Inconvenient Truth." Groups like the Green Hotels Association and the California Green Lodging Program have been set up to promote and reward eco-efforts, and there’s a trade magazine now called Green Hotelier. Hotels want in on the trend and on the promotional possibilities, so they’re burnishing their eco-resumes, finding that it not only helps protect the Earth and cut costs, but it’s also good public relations.

"We realize that sustainable tourism must have a positive impact on the environment, the traveler, and the local community,” said Michelle White, Director of Environmental Affairs for Fairmont Hotels & Resorts. “We receive positive feedback not only from our guests, but from our owners, who recognize that being good environmental stewards is actually good for business.”

In fact, Fairmont has been on the cutting edge of eco-friendly measures since 1990. In 2006, The Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn & Spa in California completed an extensive lighting retrofit, replacing 4,440 incandescent bulbs with energy-efficient fluorescent lighting. The company is launching Eco Meet, so businesses can have green conferences. And if you drive your hybrid car to any Fairmont in California, you can park for free.

Unfortunately, not all hotels are so committed. The industry is awash in a common practice called “greenwashing,” which involves taking grand bragging rights about minor, token efforts. With environmentalism having a consistent coolness factor for consumers (think Toyota’s Prius, Whole Food organic groceries, and fair-trade Starbucks coffee), industries are scrambling to out-green each other.

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So what makes a hotel green? Although there are plenty of non-government standards (such as the renowned Green Seal), the Environmental Protection Agency’s U.S. Green Building Council has a rating system for environmental buildings called LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design). It’s truly the gold standard in eco-construction. Very few buildings, let alone hotels, are LEED-certified.

Journey Inn The floors of the Journey Inn in Maiden Rock, Wis., are heated with a solar-powered water system, and the cooling is handled naturally with cross-ventilation. Curl up on a bed of natural latex foam wrapped in wool and organic cotton that rests on a wood frame harvested from sustainably managed forests.

But there are a couple: The Hilton in Vancouver, Washington was renovated to receive a LEED certification, and the Orchard Garden Hotel in San Francisco was built to LEED-certified specs. “It’s not mutually exclusive anymore to be green and luxurious,” said Stefan Mühle, the general manager of the Orchard Garden (and its sister property, the Orchard). “It’s not all Birkenstocks, granola and austerity. It’s not just a fad; it’s bound to become a standard, so it makes sense to get on board early.”

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