Greening the Inn: An Opening Salvo

My father was the first environmentalist I ever knew, and the term had not even been coined yet. Save the greenbacks, save the greenbacks, that was his motto. Though there is now a TV commercial camping on this saying, the idea of not purchasing what you don’t need, taking care of what you do have, and reusing what is wearing out is an age-old tradition. I’m sure many of you reading this had parents or grandparents with these same values. My father died with his fists tightly clenched around things he could not take with him, and that is sad. But he also died leaving a legacy of ‘conservative usage’ that I might have acknowledged sooner.

I remember my father going through the Inn’s garbage, picking out the old soap bars and saving them in a box. I remember he had us all collecting the bath towels that were starting to fray around the edges and setting up a little sewing factory downstairs to re-hem these nice plush towels. Then when the new hems started failing we used biased tape to get one more go-around out of them. Why, he didn’t even put air-conditioning in the bottom two floors of the Main Building, insisting that the top floor would insulate the lower floors. And, of course, it cooled off so nicely in the evenings. And, he had very purposefully built the Inn with most of the windows facing east so they were protected from the blasting afternoon sun. He even had a huge wine cork collection to someday make trivets out of, and he was absolutely positive you could make perfectly good drinking glasses out of old wine bottles if you could get a good enough glass cutter. The waste of these things was just too much for him.

For many years I rebelled, taking great pleasure in buying things, not taking care of them very well, and rejoicing in dropping them off at the dump when I was done with them. Now I find myself coming full-circle and embracing my father’s values. Well, not quite, but he is certainly inspiring me to look in places I might not have even thought of when it comes to re-using and recycling.

And, the idea of ‘conservative usage’ may be the biggest idea of all. But how does that square with running a quality Inn? Very well, thank you. For one thing, the vast majority of furniture my parents bought for the Inn thirty-odd years ago is still in use. Most hotels throw out every stick of furniture every five to seven years. Is that environmentally friendly? When the Inn buys new mattresses, we buy top of the line mattresses with a fifteen-year life, not some cheap thing that will end up in the landfill in five years. And then, we make every effort, when remodeling rooms, to give away everything, even down to the carpet, to staff or friends of staff. So far, almost everything we have used in our rooms has had at least one more life after we were done with it. Is that enough for an ‘opening salvo’? Please comment. I intend for this blog to be an open forum where new ideas can filter into a small business where luxury and social conscience can live together.