Hotels continue to “warm up” to carbon offset programs.
One of the latest examples: TravelGreen, run by Sustainable Travel International, a nonprofit company in Boulder, Colo. The company markets “Mini-Green Tags” to hotels and guests. The proceeds, it says, will fund conservation and renewable energy, such as solar and wind power.
“The idea is based on so-called ‘carbon offsets’ that Expedia and other travel companies offer as optional purchases to customers who travel by air,” said Jane Engle in The Los Angeles Times.
Such offsets, designed to help counter carbon-dioxide emissions that travel generates, now are spreading through the lodging industry.
Leading Hotels of the World recently started using TravelGreen. And at Bonneville Hot Springs Resort on the Columbia Gorge, which helped pilot the program, some guests attending a conference last fall bought Mini-Green Tags.
Sales of Mini-Green Tags will develop wind power in Washington and Oregon and build hydroelectric power stations in India, said Brian T. Mullis, president of Sustainable Travel International.
Report by David Wilkening
