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WHITE PLAINS, NY — Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. has introduced green meeting guidelines at its North American properties and plans to roll out the practices globally next year.

The hotel chain, which operates 1,000 properties around the world, unveiled the Starwood Sustainable Meeting Practices this week. The strategies are to be incorporated in all meetings and events conducted at the facilities operated Starwood and its brands.

The program involves 18 practices that are grouped into five core categories. Highlights include:

• Paperless Meeting Planning — Tools typically used in the planning process have gone digital, including sales proposals, menu selection, room list creation, and reservation cross-checking.
• Sustainable Meeting Services — When paper products are needed, materials made from recycled and recyclable content can be provided; use of eco-friendly non-paper tools such as LED signage and white board is offered; access to green transportation services is available; and recycling bins are provided for all meeting spaces.
• Sustainable Food & Beverage Practices — In addition to providing sustainable food choices for meeting menus, the hotels can use tables that do not require coverings as well as china, utensils and other tableware that are reusable. The properties are to provide alternatives to bottled water and eco-friendly containers for box lunches or other circumstances when packaging is required. Donation of leftover food also is to be arranged if requested.
• Impact Assessment Tools — Hotels are to generate a report for clients that shows the impact of their meeting on the environment.
• Socially Conscious Activities — Hotels are also to advise clients of team-building or volunteer activities that enable meeting attendees to aid the local community.

A year in the making, the program “formalizes environmental practices our hotels have been implementing and we are excited to encourage,” said Sandy Swider, Starwood’s vice president for Global Citizenship said in a statement.

Meeting and business travel has begun to recover from the flatline resulting from the recession, and according to Starwood demands for sustainable meeting solutions are on the upswing as well.

The Starwood brands include St. Regis, The Luxury Collection, W, Westin, Le Meridien, Sheraton, Four Points by Sheraton and the recently launched Aloft and Element hotels.

Last week, Travelocity made it easier for travelers to locate eco-friendly lodgings in the United Kingdom. The online travel service has partnered with the Green Tourism Business Scheme and flagged hundreds of hotels in the United Kingdom with its green leaf tag.

In all, Travelocity has listed more than 1,700 properties in its Green Hotel Directory. To qualify for the directory, lodgings must be endorsed by a leading green hotel certifying body, appear in the Rainforest Alliance’s Eco-Index of Sustainable Tourism, or demonstrate “significant strides” in at least three of the four areas of the Tourism Sustainability Council‘s criteria.

To view the article, visit GreenBiz

Microsoft has created a new application with the potential to reduce energy use by personal computers by up to 80 percent, according to a report in PC World. According to the report, which cited a Microsoft study of the application titled “Sleepless in Seattle No Longer.”

The study took place over six months and included 50 PC users. Researchers developed a “sleep proxy” which allows the computer to enter sleep mode when not in use, but remain connected to the network. The computer can then be “reawakened” by the user or IT administrator either directly or remotely when its resources are needed. The paper stated that implementation of the sleep proxy by large enterprises could create several millions of dollars worth of savings.

The system Microsoft implemented allowed computers to sleep more than 50 percent of the time. The system is composed of two components, the SleepServer and SleepNotifier programs. According to a second study on the SleepServer component, energy savings from implementing the system could range from 60 to 80 percent. Fifty to 80 percent of electricity use in modern buildings can be attributed to IT use, according to the second study.

Microsoft plans to present the paper at the Usenix conference in Boston. The software company recently won the Uptime Institute’s Audacious Idea Award for its data center efficiency strategy. The company also recently unveiled its Hohm tool for computing home energy use.

Click on the link to read the Microsoft study of the application titled “Sleepless in Seattle No Longer.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) plans to ban the use of the insecticide endosulfan, which is used on vegetables, fruits, and cotton as well as on ornamental shrubs, trees, and herbaceous plants. The federal agency says the chemical can pose neurological and reproductive risks to farmworkers and wildlife and can persist in the environment.

The European Union and other countries already ban the use of endosulfan, a chemical cousin of DDT, reports a CNN blog. About 1.4 million pounds of endosulfan are used annually in the United States, according to the EPA.

Prompting the EPA’s move to ban the chemical is new data that indicates workers face greater risks than previously known. The new data, together with scientific peer review, have improved EPA’s assessment of the ecological and worker risks from endosulfan.

Endosulfan is used on a very small percentage of the U.S. food supply and does not present a risk to human health from dietary exposure, according to the EPA.

To view the article, visit Environmental Leader

I know that talking about infrastructure isn’t a sexy blog topic. It’s about as exciting as doing laundry. But here’s the thing: We have to do it.

 According to a recent report from the Urban Land Institute and Ernst & Young, there is no greater infrastructure challenge facing the country today than water.
We’ve got a triple whammy going on.
First whammy: The U.S. uses the most water per capita in the world — more than 656,000 gallons annually. That’s very close to the amount of water in an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Compare that to China, which uses less than 186,000 gallons per person each year.

To view the article, visit GreenBiz

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Energy Star program offers low to no-cost energy-efficient cooling tips to beat the heat.  A typical household spends almost 20 percent of its utility bill on cooling, and by taking steps this summer to improve energy efficiency, you can save energy, save money and help fight climate change. 

Try these simple tips to start saving today:

 

No-Cost  

• Program your thermostat to work around your family’s summer schedule—set it a few degrees higher (such as 78 degrees) when no one is home, so your cooling system isn’t cooling an empty house. With proper use, programmable thermostats can save you about $180 a year in energy costs.
• Check your HVAC system’s air filter every month. If the filter looks dirty, change it, but change the filter at least every three months. A dirty filter will slow air flow and make the system work harder to keep you cool, wasting energy.
• Run your ceiling fan to create a cool breeze. If you raise your thermostat by only two degrees and use your ceiling fan, you can lower cooling costs by up to 14 percent. Remember that ceiling fans cool you, not the room, so when you leave the room make sure to turn off the fan.
• Pull the curtains and shades closed before you leave your home to keep the sun’s rays from overheating the interior of your home. If you can, move container trees and plants in front of sun-exposed windows to serve as shade.

 

Low-Cost

• Remember to have your HVAC system serviced annually to ensure it’s running at optimum efficiency for money and energy savings.  
• Swap out incandescent bulbs with more energy-efficient lighting choices. Energy Star qualified lighting not only uses less energy, it also produces about 75 percent less heat than incandescent lighting, so cooling bills will be reduced, too.  
• Seal your air ducts. As much as 20 percent of the air moving through your home’s duct system is lost due to leaks and poor connections. Seal duct work using mastic sealant or metal tape and insulate all the ducts that you can access (such as those in attics, crawlspaces, unfinished basements, and garages).
• Make sure that connections at vents and registers are well-sealed where they meet floors, walls, and ceilings. These are common locations to find leaks and disconnected ductwork.  

 

Other Tips  

• When buying a room air conditioner, look for one that has earned EPA’s Energy Star. If every room air conditioner in the United States were Energy Star qualified, they would prevent 900 million pounds of greenhouse gas emissions annually—equivalent to the emissions from 80,000 cars.  
• Add insulation to your attic to keep cool air in. If every American household did so, Americans would collectively save more than $1.8 billion in yearly energy costs.  
• Hire a contractor to seal and insulate the interior ductwork in your home (the ducts you can’t reach yourself). For help on choosing the right contractor, go to http://www.energystar.gov/homeimprovement

If your central air conditioning unit is more than 12 years old, replacing it with a model that has earned EPA’s Energy Star could cut your cooling costs by 30 percent. 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Energy Star program offers low to no-cost energy-efficient cooling tips to beat the heat.  A typical household spends almost 20 percent of its utility bill on cooling, and by taking steps this summer to improve energy efficiency, you can save energy, save money and help fight climate change. 

Try these simple tips to start saving today:

 

No-Cost

• Program your thermostat to work around your family’s summer schedule—set it a few degrees higher (such as 78 degrees) when no one is home, so your cooling system isn’t cooling an empty house. With proper use, programmable thermostats can save you about $180 a year in energy costs.
• Check your HVAC system’s air filter every month. If the filter looks dirty, change it, but change the filter at least every three months. A dirty filter will slow air flow and make the system work harder to keep you cool, wasting energy.
• Run your ceiling fan to create a cool breeze. If you raise your thermostat by only two degrees and use your ceiling fan, you can lower cooling costs by up to 14 percent. Remember that ceiling fans cool you, not the room, so when you leave the room make sure to turn off the fan.
• Pull the curtains and shades closed before you leave your home to keep the sun’s rays from overheating the interior of your home. If you can, move container trees and plants in front of sun-exposed windows to serve as shade.

Low-Cost

• Remember to have your HVAC system serviced annually to ensure it’s running at optimum efficiency for money and energy savings.
• Swap out incandescent bulbs with more energy-efficient lighting choices. Energy Star qualified lighting not only uses less energy, it also produces about 75 percent less heat than incandescent lighting, so cooling bills will be reduced, too.
• Seal your air ducts. As much as 20 percent of the air moving through your home’s duct system is lost due to leaks and poor connections. Seal duct work using mastic sealant or metal tape and insulate all the ducts that you can access (such as those in attics, crawlspaces, unfinished basements, and garages).
• Make sure that connections at vents and registers are well-sealed where they meet floors, walls, and ceilings. These are common locations to find leaks and disconnected ductwork.

Other Tips

·         When buying a room air conditioner, look for one that has earned EPA’s Energy Star. If every room air conditioner in the United States were Energy Star qualified, they would prevent 900 million pounds of greenhouse gas emissions annually—equivalent to the emissions from 80,000 cars.

·         Add insulation to your attic to keep cool air in. If every American household did so, Americans would collectively save more than $1.8 billion in yearly energy costs.

·         Hire a contractor to seal and insulate the interior ductwork in your home (the ducts you can’t reach yourself). For help on choosing the right contractor, go to http://www.energystar.gov/homeimprovement

If your central air conditioning unit is more than 12 years old, replacing it with a model that has earned EPA’s Energy Star could cut your cooling costs by 30 percent.