11 Tips and Tricks for Greening your Hotel Stay: 25 Days to Green Travel, Day 16
Let’s face it, as much as we love camping, hostels, and eco-lodges sometimes a hotel is the most reasonable option. Luckily, even when staying at the least environmentally-friendly hotel you have a lot of control over your environmental impact. Here are 11 of our favorite tips and tricks for being a little friendlier to Mother Earth during your next hotel stay:
- Unplug, unplug, unplug. The first thing you should do when you walk into a hotel room is unplug. 5 lamps? Unplug 4. Mini-fridge? Unless you’ve brought a turkey and mayo sandwich, unplug. Coffee maker? Unplug. Hair dryer? Unplug. Appliances drain energy even when they’re not on. If you just spend 2 minutes unplugging items you will already have made a difference.
- Hang your towel. In my experience housekeeping is haphazard in their pledge to “save the environment one towel at a time.” Most times I hang the towel and come back later to find they’ve replaced it anyway; but about 50% of the time they leave it for me.
- Move the soap. An easy trick to reduce your waste is to bring the bar of soap with you to the shower when you shower and leave it by the sink the rest of the time. Seriously, when was the last time you used two full bars of soap at a hotel? (Or even one full bar?)
- Stick the “Do not Disturb” on your door. Or just call housekeeping and tell them you won’t need their services during your stay. To prevent the hotel from wasting water by changing your sheets and towels, wasting electricity by vacuuming, and spraying harsh chemicals all over your toothbrush, just ask them to refrain from cleaning your room during your stay.
- Adjust the thermostat. By lowering the temperature by 2 degrees in the winter or raising it by 2 in the summer you will save a lot of energy. And you won’t notice the difference.
- When you leave the room turn everything off:
- Lights
- TV
- Thermostat (if the weather is mild)
- Flush less frequently. No need to flush every time. Practice the “if it’s brown flush it down, if it’s yellow let it mellow” rule.
- Bring your own toiletries. I personally know the pains of the 3 oz of liquids on planes rule. A liter of genuine, carried-back-from-Ireland Whiskey was confiscated from us on a 6 am flight the day the emergency (and now permanent) rule came down. True story. But think of all of the plastics that are used to create tiny bottles of shampoo and conditioner. And all of the extra packaging in luxury hotel items. Plus, by bringing your own shampoo you can prevent a bad hair day from bad shampoo.
- Take shorter showers. Sometimes a long, hot shower feels incredible. But do you need that every day? The average US shower head spits out about 2.5 gallons per minute, which means in a 15 minute shower you use nearly 40 gallons of water. Yikes!
- Leave the pen (and other freebies) behind. I don’t know why, but I’m a sucker for free pens. Even the crappy ones that explode in my purse on the airplane ride home. Do the earth a favor and leave these items behind.
- Recycle. Find out if the hotel recycles. If they do, ask if they separate it out from waste-bins. If they don’t, take your free USA Today and empty cans and bottles and toss them in an extra pocket in your suitcase to recycle later. They weigh almost nothing.
photo credit: trekkyandy
What tips or tricks do you have that help you be a (more) responsible hotel-goer?
11 Tips and Tricks for Greening your Hotel Stay is the sixteenth post in Go Green Travel Green’s 25 Days to Green Travel series. You can see the complete list of articles in the 25 Days to Green Travel Index. If you haven’t already, subscribe to our feed (also available via email) and stay up to date.
Great Tips! Only one I would add is to avoid that bottle water they often leave you in the room. Tap water works fine, and you avoid the plastic waste…
Christine- Thanks that’s a great tip! That also leads me to think of another tip: If they give you plastic cups to drink tap water with; use your water bottle instead.
Hi! You’ve got a great blog here! Thanks for the comment on my site — it’s wonderful to find other people blogging about green travel. I’m subscribing now!
Great tips! I feel pretty solid as a green traveller, but it’s always good to read even more about it! The housekeeping tip is particularly helpful for most - it may escape people that the constant washing is one of the most wasteful part of their stay.
During our last hotel stay, I couldn’t help but notice all of the conservation requests that the hotel posted. That’s where this will get interesting: people pay to stay in hotels, those of us who know better won’t overuse resources, others might take offense at the place they’re paying to stay at restricting their use of the facilities.
My best-case: stay in a green hotel!
[...] presents (1) Sustainable Dining Guide: 25 Days to Green Travel, Day 15, (2) 11 Tips and Tricks for Greening your Hotel, (3) Stay: 25 Days to Green Travel, Day 16, (4) How to Find Green Accommodations: 25 Days to Green [...]
I just love blogs like this! I am a huge lover of our dear mother earth and I follow the code of green very thoroughly. Thank you for being such a dear and posting such a good blog. Nice work!
Being green is a good way to live life. My family was vacationing on the outer banks in North Carlina where a shortage of water was causing the hotel to inform guests to try to reuse towels if possible to help reduce water being used in laundry facilities.
I thought, yes, you should probably be letting folks know to try doing this all of the time. At home we’ll reuse towels whenever possible for a couple of days to help cut down on laundry loads and water usage in our home. Done with a towel, hang it back up. It’s these little things we all can do that help out.
Thank you very much for the great information-
Thanks
do not use plastic bag:)
Thanks for great tips for our Green. Let’s keep our world.
It was really nice posting and very informative. Also to learn more about Corfu Hotel, Corfu Apartments, Corfu Island, and more visit – http://www.delfinblu.gr
Here’s another tip: bring your own soap and shampoo. Most travelers prefer their own, but often forget to pack it. What I do is keep a separate shower gel and shampoo bottle in my toiletry bag that never leaves that bag. That way, I never forget it when I pack and unpack it.
Thanks for great tips for our Green. Let’s keep our world.
hi,
these are very important tips which you have posted. I am an absolute environment friendly person who is always ready to follow the green path. It was nice reading the things which i try to practice most of the times during my stays at various hotels.
Hi there, I’m currently trying to find new ways to make the two hotels that I work for a bit more environmentally friendly and this article was a big help! If you have any more pearls of wisdom feel free to e-mail me or comment on this article I wrote on one of the hotel’s blogs.
http://bit.ly/5ff763
Great blog by the way.
Hello,
I am a Revenue Manager for 3 hotels in Fargo North Dakota. I just started in this position and I want to implement a green program immidiatly. If you have any tips or suggestions for me to add to our program please let me know. I am open to trying anything that may help.
@Jonathan Meier and @Josh - It’s great to hear you’re trying to make your hotels greener! Have you checked out the hotels section of our website? You can read our reviews of hotels of specific hotels from an eco point of view, as well as tips for hotels to be greener.