Mr. Weissman

Eco-Friendly Practices

How Sustainability Can Contribute to Your Community's Economic Vitality

By Arthur Weissman, President and CEO, Green Seal, Inc.

Property's Footprint, Particularly Relating to Worker Health

Every individual, institution, and activity has what is called an environmental footprint - essentially its impact on the environment through resource use, pollution, and waste. The footprint is sometimes literally calculated in terms of a land area (the portion of the Earth's surface required to support the entity), but we will just use it more generally here.

While lodging properties do not typically have heavy footprints in regard to their effect on the immediate local area, compared to smokestack industries, for example, they nonetheless can have significant and not necessarily positive local impacts. Examples include solid and potentially hazardous waste emanating from the property; water use in more arid locales and energy use where that is constrained (such as at peak use times); use of toxic substances (cleaners, paints, pesticides) and their effect on local air and water quality. These are all potential drains on the local economy because they erode the resource base and may cause additional public or private expenditures. For example, high water use in rooms and landscapes may require restrictions on other businesses. Conversely, a more sustainable environmental footprint will conserve the value of local resources and maintain their health for other users and for the future.

A particular area of the footprint that quickly gets disseminated in the community is the effect on the property's own workers. If the working environment is maintained in a healthful state, workers maintain their own health and productivity and contribute in their homes and other community activities fully. If the property uses products that may compromise worker health - such as cleaning chemicals that cause asthma or other respiratory infections, or pesticides that may have even longer-term effects - workers may not only find their own health and productivity diminished but also potentially bring back health problems that affect their families and neighbors.

Property as Community Leader and Model

Hotel properties can be pillars of the community, even in this age of placeless brand names and replicated franchises. This may be more obvious and true in the case of major properties particularly at the upper end of the scale, for they often play the role of centers for meetings, conferences, political events, and even just meals. But more modest properties may also contribute vitally as centers in their own communities and neighborhoods.

This centrality brings with it the potential for properties to act as a model of community behavior, whether in the environmental, social, or other arena. Properly embraced, this role may also be that of leadership in these areas. What is most important is that the property actually demonstrate role model behavior - not only that it makes claims to it. As a small to medium business, each individual property may set the tone and substance for sustainable behavior in its purchasing and operations. Once this level is achieved, it is, of course, necessary to publicize the good deeds of the property, whether in the lobby, meeting and guest rooms, or the media (including its Web site, press releases, news articles, etc.). This will encourage and stimulate not only competing properties but also other enterprises to follow suit, for the overall health of the community.

Property as Educator

Complementary to being a role model and leader, a sustainable property can act as an educator and thereby enhance the economic value of its community. As we have seen in this series over the years, sustainability is an ever evolving process, not a static state, and we all need help from others in embracing it as a business or personal strategy. Here is where the property can help give life to its community's economy: by showing how sustainable purchasing and operations actually improve health, lower costs and liabilities, and protect both the community's and the global environment.

This involves educating others in the community about how to make one's purchasing, operations, and facilities management more environmentally responsible in the first place. This information could be shared in a number of ways, including Web pages, seminars, press, and conferences. As with being a leader, the incidental benefits of being seen as a sustainability educator in the community cannot but help business: the property will be seen as a progressive, healthful place to meet and stay.

Of course, property or chain managers will first have to educate themselves before they can demonstrate appropriate leadership behavior and educate others. That is more or less the purpose of most of the previous articles in this series, as well as the work of my organization, Green Seal, and others. We aren't pretending this is an easy path to take, but it can be immediately and continually rewarding, no less for the result of helping others in the community along the same way.

Property as Donor

Besides these intangible benefits provided to communities by green properties, the latter can also provide concrete contributions in the form of donations of goods and services. One obvious item is food: most hotel events are lavish in their offerings of food, and much is left uneaten. The surplus should go to a community's food bank or homeless shelter rather than being wasted or thrown out.

Since most properties renovate on a roughly five-year cycle, there are many useful case goods and furnishings, such as furniture, bedspreads, pillows, and curtains, that could be made available to the community through donation. Sheets and towels may recycle on an even more frequent basis. We are reminded of a major Boston property that pioneered green practices in the late 1990s; it regularly reused old furnishings, which staff tailors re-worked into uniforms and such. Such materials can be of value to many institutions in a community.

Property as Magnet for Business

Most of all, a sustainable property - as a leader, educator, and donor to the community, as well as a contributor to its health and welfare through its footprint - can act as a magnet for other business, thus contributing to the community's economic vitality. Let's see how.

In the simplest way, a sustainable property can attract more business because of its reputation for being operated in a better way. We have seen this with various certified properties that have promoted their status to potential customers. This enhanced business not only helps the property directly, but also provides indirect economic benefits to the community through spin-offs to suppliers, workers, etc. that do business with the property or its customers.

As previously discussed, properties can act as pillars of the community because of their stature and reputation. If a property is perceived as being on the cutting edge through its sustainable operations, it can also attract other businesses to the area. These might, of course, include other "green" businesses that want to capitalize on the "sustainability center" created by the property or that wish to do business with the property. But it may also just attract other businesses that perceive the property as a geographic magnet for economic activity and vitality. Major properties may already be accustomed to acting as such a magnet, but the point here is that the added dimension of sustainability can provide the necessary differentiator from so many other major properties that are being built around communities.

Conclusions

Whether your property or chain qualifies as large, mid-size, or small, it can play a vital role in the economic and environmental health of the community(ies) it is part of. Through more sustainable purchasing, operations, and facilities management, it can leave a more healthful environmental footprint on the community and its people; serve as a leader, model, and educator in more sustainable practices; and provide both tangible goods and broader economic benefits to the community(ies) around it. The latter is probably the most exciting: that sustainable properties can actually be a magnet for the continued vitality and growth of the community. That means continuing growth in your own business, too.

Dr. Weissman has over 25 years of experience in environmental policy, standards, and enforcement. He joined Green Seal in 1993 as Vice President of Standards and Certification, becoming President and CEO in late 1996, and he served as Chair of the Global Ecolabelling Network from 1994 to 1997. Prior to joining Green Seal, he was responsible for developing national policy and guidance for the Superfund program at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He also served as a Congressional Science Fellow and worked for The Nature Conservancy in Connecticut. He holds a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in physical geography and environmental science, a masters in natural resource management from Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and a bachelors degree from Harvard University. He can be reached at aweissman@greenseal.org

Arthur B. Weissman, Ph.D., is President and CEO of Green Seal, Inc. He has experience in environmental science, policy, and standard-setting in public and private sectors. He has led the non-profit's resurgence as a force to make the economy more sustainable. He served as an international convener in developing the ISO 14000 standards for environmental labeling, and was the first Chair of the Global Ecolabeling Network. He has developed policy for the Superfund waste-cleanup program, served in the U.S. Senate as a Science Fellow, and worked for The Nature Conservancy. Mr. Weissman can be contacted at 202-872-6400 or aweissman@greenseal.org Extended Bio...

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