Following my recent stats post about travelers' bad habits, I thought I'd give recognition to the hotels who are, at least, offering eco-options for their guests–even if they aren't being fully taken advantage of.

To begin, ELEMENT Hotels, a soon-to-open division of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, deserve kudos not just for what they're going to offer guests–they deserve a pat on the back for underwriting the survey that has generated so many stories about green hotel options in the past few days.

One such story, from the Chicago Tribune, sums up what a number of prominent hotel chains are doing, and is well worth reading. From the Four Seasons here in Jackson Hole

replacing 7,000 plastic bottles of water left when beds are turned down in the evening with pitchers of local tap water

To the InterContinental Group's

initiative to replace more than 250,000 incandescent light bulbs with CFLs in more than 200 company-managed hotels in the Americas

The Tribune story concludes:

As responsible corporate entities, Starwood and other hotel companies believe they must slash waste and pollution because it makes both sound economic and public relations sense. While many hotel groups have green policies in place, Hyatt, Ritz-Carlton and others are ramping up their eco-initiatives. In time the whole industry will have to be green to be competitive.

That's good news for all of us.

Carbon Neutral Journal's kudos are brought to you by Grand Targhee Resort–a resort with many green initiatives.

Popularity: 27%