HOTELS Interview: A green tour among many shades of sustainability

For about a year and a half now, The Westin Peachtree Plaza in Atlanta has offered a “green tour” — a behind-the-scenes look at various sustainability efforts at the 1,073-key hotel. General Manager Ron Tarson estimated about 50 or 60 individuals had taken the tour so far this year as of about a month ago, with more expected in the coming months.

HOTELS asked Tarson about guest reactions to the tour as well as the property’s broader sustainability goals.

HOTELS: Why has The Westin Peachtree Plaza made such a strong commitment to green initiatives?

Ron Tarson: Starwood Hotels & Resorts, first of all, is a great supporter. They had all of their hotels tackle an initiative of 30, 20 by 20 — power and water reduction by 30% and 20% by 2020.

At the next level, Westin is a well-being brand — sleep well, play well, work well, eat well and the rest of it. It’s a perfect brand for sustainability initiatives.

Another contributor is that meeting planners are increasingly more interested in sustainability efforts. You see it earlier and earlier and more forcefully everywhere, asking questions about what do you do in the area of sustainability — at the RFP level, at site visits, in the contracts — it’s everywhere.

The fourth thing is our associates are very interested in that. We’ve had a Green Council in effect since 2009 that launched a number of great initiatives, one of them being our decision to get Green Seal-certified, which we managed to do by 2012. We have a very active Green Council of associates who just came for their interest in being more sustainable and who really drive what we do.

H: What kinds of groups tend to take the green tour?

RT: It’s on our list for onsite specialty events. It is largely planners who are tied into sustainability, but it’s not just green meetings people. For example, we had a large AMEX meeting in here, and they took advantage of the tour.

H: What kind of feedback are you getting from guests about the green tour or any of your sustainability initiatives?

RT: Every tour is so different, and everybody has different areas of interest.

Generally, people love hotel laundry. They love to see how much is done in the laundry, the way we use friendly cleaners. We do 136,000 pounds (61,689 kilograms) of laundry each week, and to see those huge machines and people all over the place working and the ironing machines — that’s a real hit.

It gives some guests an idea of what the composting process looks like start to finish. We go to the kitchen, and they can see the black bins that we put everything in. The chef also talks about how it starts before that. It starts with receiving product in biodegradable or recyclable containers. Then it goes to what you do with the compost into the bins. Then you get to follow it to the loading dock, and our guys point out an area in the loading dock where we have a dedicated freezer for compost so it doesn’t start degrading early. So they’re able to follow a process from one place to another, and that’s kind of interesting to people as well.

H: How do you measure the ROI for these green initiatives? 

RT: Some of it’s a little easier to track than the rest of it. The 30-20-20 stuff is relatively easy to track.

Much of the savings in energy was also an investment to upgrade the physical plant. There was a US$13 million commitment to upgrade the central plant that was responsible for a lot of that.

You can also look at something like our process that lets us take laundry water and filter it for clean reuse. That reduces water usage by 85%.

We have a one-stream recycling system for cardboard, paper, plastics, aluminum and glass. We recycle almost a half million pounds annually.

You can look at the things that we do and the money that we save, but some of it’s a little hard to quantify.

H: Do you think the green tour and your other sustainability initiatives are translating to better meetings business?

RT: It’s hard to say if people selected us particularly because of that, but I think it creates goodwill and trust — the goodwill that we’re working toward the same goals and the trust that the things we say we’re doing can be backed up by going in and taking a look at it. That’s really important. I think our relationships with people interested in that are stronger because of the trust in confidence we’ve been able to build.

H: What can you share about future initiatives along these lines the hotel has planned?

RT: Most of our ideas bubble up through our Green Council, and they bring wild ideas — anything from beekeeping and gardens on the 74^th-floor roof to things that they’ve read about. So while we don’t have any particular game changers in mind, we’re always looking for the next thing to do, always keeping in mind that we want to take a balanced approach to this where we’ve got concern for the environment, the right thing for the hotel and our guests are also on board. I think we’ve been able to do it where all three of those areas are taken care of in a good way, and we’ll just keep moving ahead.