Environmental action is spurred by a variety of internal and external situations.
Internal situations include wanting to save money and feeling a need to protect the environment.
External situations can start as problems and become benefits; overcoming adversity is like making lemonade from the lemons life hands you.
Habitat Suites, in Austin, Texas, had an open field adjacent to their property, until recently.
The development of the land into a soccer field created drainage problem for Habitat Suites.
As an open field the natural vegetation absorbed rainfall nicely, but the soccer field is less absorbent and the runoff floods right into the Habitat Suites parking lot.
The parking lot drainage feeds a retention pond, planted with water-loving bog vegetation, but with the additional runoff, more attention is needed to collection and storage.
Wetlands can be overwhelmed by too much water too; animals in the wetland areas are particularly vulnerable.
Something has to be done to protect the area.
The solution? Sink a cistern in the lowest point in the parking lot to capture the extra runoff.
The cistern idea seems like such a great idea that Habitat Suites is also going to address two areas on the property that flood after heavy rains by putting a smaller cistern in each of those spots.
They hope to have some school kids help with the excavation and monitoring of the cisterns after they are installed; what a great way to get kids involved and educated about the environment and problem solving! The buried rain cisterns will help them lower their watering bills and put the water back onto the land when it's needed, as well as protect their property and guests from harm.
Guest newspapers can also provide an interesting challenge for green hotels.
If you provide a newspaper for every occupied guestroom, chances are you are wasting lots of newspapers and that goes against the environmental good green hotels are trying to accomplish.
How do you provide that service without being wasteful? Some of the solutions I've heard some hotels provide a newsstand for guests who want a paper.
The Siena Hotel in Reno, Nevada, provides a few newspapers per floor, placed on a table by the elevators, so guests who are interested in one can grab it.
Habitat Suites offers papers at the front desk for guests wanting a news, weather, and sports fix.
If you don't provide one per occupied guestroom, how do you determine how many to provide? Habitat Suites, in Austin, Texas, anticipates providing papers for about one-third of their guests and uses left overs for cleaning glass and windows.
Pamper your guests and the environment too by being judicious with newspaper distribution.
Provide papers to those who want them and don't bother guests who don't want them.
And of course newspapers left in the room are recycled, right? Guest soaps are another interesting dilemma.
What do you do with those bars of soap that guests use once or twice? Most hotels throw them away.
Some lodging properties collect them and give them to various charities who send them to third world countries, or give them to shelters and jails.
And then there are some properties who clean the soaps, melt them down, and pour them into molds, and sell the newly made soaps in their gift shops.
That's a lot of extra work, but it could be a good job for either an enterprising "kid" or senior citizen.
The bottom line is to save the soaps from entering the waste stream and ending up in the landfill.
Examples of other lemons-to-lemonade ideas are numerous.
Dry the fresh flowers placed around the hotel to make potpourri that's sold in the gift shop.
Collect food scraps and give them to farmers to feed their livestock.
Donate vegetable scraps to organic farmers for composting.
Has life handed your business a lemon, of any size? Are you making lemonade? Are you turning the negative into a positive? It could be a great opportunity.
Act on it.
Go Green.
Be Eco Friendly.
That would be an EcoNomically Sound approach to your environmental issues.