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Sustainable Hotel? My Arse

Posted: 24-09-07

I do believe that people are getting it all wrong. I mean, they'll come round eventually, they'll have to in order to stay in business, but honestly, all the floundering around is frankly embarrassing for me to observe.

I'm talking about what I guess is called "Greenwash", but having little to go on in terms of a coherent definition of this, other than having seen it somewhere on George Monbiot's website, I'm in no position in which to dictate terminology. I talk of the plethora of companies that love to let you know that they are caring for the environment and what they'd like you, their customer to do, is to care for it in the same way. Laudable enough you might think and I'd agree too - if they were in any way serious about such things. However, as I'm sure you can guess - I can tell you now that they can't possibly be.

In the hotel I'm currently staying at, there is a notice in my bathroom asking guests to think if they actually need to use a towel, to save on energy and poisonous detergents in the needless washing of otherwise quite clean towels. A good number of decisions, meetings and memos would have been required for such a thing to be initiated I'd wager, especially given the size of the internationally renowned hotel chain in question.

So why is it then that I find only a general waste-bin next to my single star energy rated fridge, which is actually empty save for 6 non–recyclable plastic milk pots? The hotel isn't even saved by its use of energy–efficient light bulbs. I can't imagine w