GOING
GREEN IS GOOD FOR BUSINESS
by Chris Ott
First, the bad news. Travel can be hard
on the environment. Take flying: jet engines can burn
more fuel per mile than almost any other form of transportation.
Typical jets burn twice as much fuel as trains, which
are one of the most energy-efficient ways of getting
around, besides walking or pedaling.
The good news, however, is that more
and more travel companies are taking steps to reduce
the impact of air travel and other activities on the
environment—as well as helping their customers
do even more.
This is big news for the whole planet,
because travel is big business. According to the International
Ecotourism Society (http://www.ecotourism.org),
tourism accounts for one in twelve of the world’s
jobs. Therefore, progress in the travel industry can
help travelers to see and enjoy the world without contributing
to environmental problems like a hotter, more volatile
climate.
The main steps taken by companies in
the travel industry to reduce their impact on the environment
used to be fairly basic: things like giving hotel guests
the option of reusing their linens and towels. That’s
a step in the right direction, but no one ever said
sleeping twice on the same sheets would keep enough
carbon out of the atmosphere to stave off serious problems.
Fortunately, some companies have embarked
on more ambitious programs to curb global warming. Not
only that, but these far-sighted companies also tend
to be leaders in treating lesbian and gay employees
and customers fairly as well.
One example is Marriott International
(http://www.marriott.com),
which in addition to its gay-friendly credentials (diversity
training, a nondiscrimination policy, and health insurance
coverage for domestic partners) is well into a ten-year
effort to educate both its employees and guests about
environmental issues, and to reduce the company’s
impact on the environment. The program is called ECHO
(Environmentally Conscious Hotel Operations), and the
program has earned Marriott the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency’s “Sustained Excellence Award.”
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ECHO starts with basic conservation
measures like encouraging linen reuse, as well as the
replacement of 450,000 light bulbs and 400,000 showerheads
with more energy-efficient models. The goal is to reduce
the company’s carbon emissions by 20 percent between
2000 and 2010—the equivalent of taking 140,000
cars off the road.
Marriott hasn’t stopped with linens,
light bulbs, and showerheads, though. In April, the
company held an Expo for 3,000 of its employees, with
vendors showing off the latest eco-friendly products,
including paints, carpeting, flooring, lighting, organic
food, and hybrid vehicles.
Marriott is also promoting a book called
True Green: 100 Everyday Ways You Can Contribute to
a Healthier Planet. The company even encourages reuse
by asking employees in its Washington, DC-area headquarters
to donate unwanted professional clothes to charities
like Suited for Change (http://www.suitedforchange.org)
and MenzFit (http://www.menzfit.org),
which provide business clothes and career development
training to low-income people.
“The point is to share ideas about
how Marriott associates, or just about anybody, can
be more green at work,” says Jeff Flaherty, Marriott’s
director of public relations. “This is something
that is sort of trendy now, but it’s something
that has always made sense for our business.”
Marriott is also introducing innovative
technologies for greater efficiency. By next year, a
new ozone-based cleaning system will be in place that
cleans clothes and linens in cold water by dividing
organic molecules in the water, separating soils from
fabric, and sterilizing and deodorizing. This eliminates
the use of detergents harmful to the environment. Overall,
the system is “absolutely phenomenal,” says
Flaherty. “It greatly reduces the time, water,
and detergent needed.”
One of the most beneficial things about
energy conservation efforts like those being implemented
by Marriott has to do with efforts to curb carbon. Burning
fossil fuels combines the carbon they contain with oxygen
in the air, producing carbon dioxide—one of the
main gases implicated in global warming. Carbon dioxide
holds onto the heat of the sun better than other gases
in the atmosphere. That extra heat melts the polar ice
caps, and next thing you know, every coastal city in
the world is being evacuated.
The most straightforward way to deal
with the problem is to burn less carbon. It’s hard,
however, to burn no carbon at all, which has led to
the idea of carbon offsets. Carbon offsets allow you
to pay for a way to remove the carbon from the atmosphere
(for example, planting a single tree can remove about
a ton of carbon from the atmosphere over the tree’s
lifetime), or you can invest in technologies which emit
little or no carbon, like wind power. The result is
surprisingly affordable.
Through organizations such as CarbonFund.org
you can pay to offset the carbon emissions of a regional
trip of around 3,000 miles for $3.25. A cross-country
trip of 6,000 miles will run you $6.25, and you can
make amends for a 12,000-mile intercontinental trip
for $12.50.
Some airlines are also beginning to
take an active role in protecting the environment. Silverjet
(http://www.flysilverjet.com),
the all-business class airline that flies from New York
to London, is the first carbon neutral airline worldwide
and the Institute of Transport Management’s environmentally
aware Airline of the Year for 2007. When you purchase
a ticket on Silverjet, the price includes a mandatory
carbon offset contribution which is invested by their
climate consultancy partner, The CarbonNeutral Company
(http://www.carbonneutral.com),
to ensure that every ton of CO2 associated with your
flight is matched by one ton saved through climate-friendly
projects around the world.
Meanwhile, Virgin Atlantic (http://www.virgin-atlantic.com)
has partnered with Boeing to develop more fuel efficient
planes, and is also working with jet engine manufacturers
to develop engines that run on biofuels and emit little
or no greenhouse gases.
In support of his commitment to protect
our planet, Sir Richard Branson said he would commit
all profits from his travel firms, such as Virgin Atlantic
and Virgin Trains, over the next ten years. “We
must rapidly wean ourselves off our dependence on coal
and fossil fuels,” Sir Richard said. He emphasized
that transportation and energy companies “must
be at the forefront of developing environmentally-friendly
business strategies.”
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