by Chris Balfe and Elif Bāli, HVS Eco Services

     When it comes to recycling, hotels have long considered themselves different from other industries. With some notable exceptions, hotel operators shy away from solid waste management programs. Because of the diversity of functions and staff positions, the ceaseless 24-hour operations schedule, and the immediacy of good service, hotels have a hard time isolating recyclable waste from the trash heap. However, there are those hotels in America who are demonstrating that they have the means and the incentive to effectively conserve resources by recycling. These hotels have taken advantage of motivated management and staff, improving recycling markets, and innovative community partnerships to create top-notch traditional and creative recycling programs.

     Hotels that have harnessed the motivation and enthusiasm of their staffs have seen significant rewards, from a luxury hotel in Santa Monica which cut its costs by over 60% in only two months, to a 300-room hotel in St. Paul which diverts 150 tons of wet waste a month, reducing costs by 50%. Hotels are making recycling efforts successful, and they are making money at it. The managers in charge of these recycling programs all have key elements which drive their hotel success stories. This article will first identify a typical hotel's waste stream, and then examine the keys which have enabled different hotels throughout the country to divert waste and implement successful recycling programs.

Typical Hotel Waste Stream
     A hotel's waste stream is as diverse as it is enormous. Office paper, restaurant food waste, amenity bottles, plastic and aluminum beverage containers, countless cardboard packaging boxes, heavy machinery, and guestroom furnishings all find their way into a property's dumpster. Although this waste is diverse, the typical hotel in America generates a fairly consistent type of waste. The majority is paper and food waste, and there are lesser amounts of metals, plastic and glass. This profile is similar to the standard municipal solid waste stream coming from residential communities, largely because a hotel is much like a big house.

     Variations in a hotel's waste composition can be attributed to differences in the scope of operations and target market of the hotel. For example, limited-service hotels and motels often do not offer an on-site restaurant. This eliminates most of the food waste that makes up a large portion of a full-service hotel's waste stream. Some hotels cater to business travelers who leave office paper-type waste behind; other hotels cater to families on vacation who leave a lot of container waste (take-out boxes and bags, soda bottles and cans); and others cater to the convention and trade-show market which generates significant cardboard waste.

     The following chart displays a typical hotel's waste composition, broken down into the following materials: non-recyclables (mostly food and organic waste), paper (including newspaper and mixed paper), cardboard, metals (mostly aluminum and bi-metal), glass (all colors), and plastics. The figures displayed are based on a sample of recent hotel clients of HVS Eco Services as well as the City of Los Angeles Waste Generation Study, which examined the waste composition of 25 Los Angeles area hotels from 1991 to 1993.

     As indicated above, nearly half (46%) of a hotel's waste is made up of food and organics. Another 37% can be attributed to paper and cardboard, while roughly 17% is composed of different container wastes (plastic, metal, glass). Haulers and recycling companies that have an idea of the total volume of waste generated by a hotel property can use these proportions to estimate the amount of material that can be diverted from a hotel's waste stream for recycling.

Effective Hotel Recycling Case Studies
     One example of successful hotel recycling can be seen at Turnberry Isle Resort and Club in Aventura, Florida. Turnberry is a 340-room luxury resort featuring a golf course, marina, and full-service spa. What distinguishes this resort from most other luxury hotels is that Turnberry successfully diverts about 20% of its waste from being landfilled through a sophisticated recycling program. In 1991, before the recycling effort was underway, Turnberry disposed of 1,500 tons of waste annually. In 1997, with the help of a comprehensive recycling program encompassing mixed paper, corrugated cardboard, aluminum, bi-metal, all colors of glass bottles and jars, and plastics #1-3, as well as grass clippings and yard waste, Turnberry reduced waste sent to the landfill by over 33%. Today, the property diverts roughly 250 tons of waste through recycling and reuse, leaving less than 1,000 tons to be hauled and dumped. The additional 250-plus tons of waste that was present in 1991 but eliminated by 1997 was simply source-reduced, a product of the benefits associated with the introduction of the recycling program: heightened staff awareness concerning waste issues and a concerted effort at waste reduction.

     The success of Turnberry's program is largely attributed to the resort's recycling coordinator, Dorothy Lewis-Robshaw. She started the resort's recycling program in 1992, and has spent the past five years making sure that all employees are aware and participate in the hotel's effort. "Education is the key to our success hands-down," says Lewis-Robshaw, who makes sure that all new employees become familiar with the different facets of the hotel's recycling programs during their orientation process. "Our success also depends on commitment from management, and a hands-on approach to managing the program, getting involved, working with the departments, and targeting systems that are user-friendly," explains Lewis-Robshaw. She set up the recycling system to allow for maximum commingling of container recyclables (all plastics, metals and glass are collected together), and color coding for those materials that require separation. Lewis-Robshaw's dedicated work over the years has not only yielded impressive recycling figures, but also significant dollar savings. Prior to the introduction of the recycling program, Turnberry spent $137,000 in waste hauling costs annually. In 1997, these costs were down to $82,000, an annual savings of $55,000. To make the program even more lucrative, Turnberry uses a baler to produce 1000-pound bales of cardboard for which the resort's recycler provides a rebate. In 1997, Turnberry produced 23 tons of office paper and 46 tons of corrugated cardboard, and received rebates for these recyclable materials totaling $4,700 for the year.

     Hyatt Regency at Gainey Ranch in Scottsdale, Arizona, is a model of the environmentally responsible resort. The hotel began its effort in the summer of 1995, and has an active Green Team led by a manager, Paul Hayes, who now includes overseeing the environmental program among his responsibilities. Hayes and the resort's general manager, Bill Eider-Orley, have become well known for their efforts, and the Hyatt continues to enjoy one of the most valuable benefits associated with hotel recycling: positive PR. In 1997, Hayes accepted the Environmental Awareness Lodging Leadership Award for the property from the UCLA Extension Hotel Industry Investment Conference. In addition to this honor, the hotel has received media attention from local and national sources to spotlight the program.

     One element of the Hyatt's program which is particularly effective is the container recycling system, which diverts plastic, metal, and glass containers from the resort's compactor. In 1997, the staff managed to collect approximately 34 tons of commingled recyclables, as part of 179 total tons of material separated for recycling. The table below displays the materials collected at the Hyatt for recycling, as well as monthly and annual totals for diversion. According to Hayes, "Everyone in the organization must be held responsible for sorting recyclables correctly. Shifting the duty to someone else allows for a system breakdown and a high contamination level in collected materials. The key to successful recycling is making sorting recyclables part of everyone's job description."

     At the Holiday Inn North in St. Paul, Minnesota, the kitchens have been diverting food waste from their small compactor for years. The waste is picked up six times weekly by a local livestock farmer, who processes it so that it is safe for use as fodder. In a good month, the kitchen staff diverts over five tons of the wet waste from the compactor. Hotel engineer Tom Heardon mentions that the kitchen staff had no problem integrating the separation system into their work. The key, he believes, is the obvious visible difference in appearance of the recycling equipment (bright red roughneck bins) from the regular waste bins. "Now, they pretty much drag the [red] bins around with them as they move around getting their work done," says Heardon.

     The food recovered equals an estimated 75% of the total food waste produced. When other recycling programs were recently added, the employees responded positively and dedicated an equal commitment toward recovering cardboard, paper, and container waste. As a result, the hotel was able to convert from scheduled compactor waste service to front loader service for trash disposal. The recycling programs cut waste costs from approximately $1,500 a month to under $1,000. Furthermore, Heardon thinks the hotel may be able to remove yet another dumpster and further reduce costs if the staff keeps doing such a good job recycling.

Principles as well as Profits
     While the previous hotel examples focus on monetary savings gained from recycling the heaviest and bulkiest wastes, there is another equally important side to hotel recycling. When a recycling program reaches the hands of the staff, the goal often shifts from profits to principles. When staff members are encouraged to recycle one item such as cardboard, they will most always ask their managers how they intend to deal with the other wastes. Implementing recycling of any material, no matter how small, can help keep recycling efforts founded on the popular principles of environmentalism and conservation, rather than on profits, which do not typically motivate hotel employees.

     Hotels in Los Angeles and Orange County, California add a new twist to the recycling gamut: bars of soap from the guestrooms. While soap does not account for tons of diversion or measure up to huge savings, it does make a lot of sense when one considers that most hotel soap bars are barely used and then discarded. Bi-O-Labs in Los Angeles collects discarded soap bars from over 150 hotels and processes them into other products such as laundry soap and surface cleaners.

     Recycling as a principle can be seen in other creative ways at Turnberry, where employees who do not have access to recycling at home are encouraged to bring their recyclable materials to work so that the materials are not dumped. Lewis-Robshaw also runs programs aimed at collecting non-traditional items for reuse such as egg cartons, strawberry baskets, six-pack soda rings, five-gallon pickle pails, shelving, posterboards, and tennis ball canisters. These items are either claimed for reuse by hotel staff members, or donated to such organizations as children's museums, pre-schools, and day care centers, for use in arts and crafts activities. Additionally, instead of discarding flowers after banquet functions, Turnberry donates them to a local hospice unit. After five years of experience with hotel recycling, Turnberry has decided to share its experience and know-how with other area hotels. The resort will host a Hotel Recycling Symposium on April 22, Earth Day 1998, where hotels from the tri-county area (Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties in Florida) will be invited to learn the basics of setting up a hotel recycling program from those who have done it successfully. Lewis-Robshaw explained the purpose of the symposium: "We hope to provide newcomers with the resources, contacts and support they need to make it work in their own hotel, no matter what the size."

Keys to Successful Recycling
     As seen in these successful hotel recycling projects, the rewards -- diversion of waste from traditional disposal and the resulting cost savings, positive PR, and improved employee motivation -- are well worth the effort. So the question remains, why have the majority of hotels in America still not joined the recycling movement? The simplest answer may be the difficulty involved in coordinating a program consisting of so many layers – management, hotel employees, guests, and waste service personnel. Recycling is unwieldy for hotels. The myriad of haulers, recyclers, requirements, and equipment options can make implementing an effective and comprehensive recycling system a confounding project. Furthermore, because a hotel has so many employees in different areas of operations handling waste disposal, there is plenty of room for contamination if complicated source separation is required for recycling.

So how can the hotel industry overcome these obstacles? The answer lies in the key elements to success that we have identified:

1. Employee education;

2. Management's commitment to the recycling program;

3. Hands-on management and monitoring of the program;

4. Implementing user-friendly systems such as using clearly labeled and visually unique bins for collecting recyclables (e.g., red bins); and

5. Making sorting recyclables part of every hotel employee's job description.

Properties which found their solid waste programs on these key elements will make the most of their recycling opportunities and reap benefits for everyone involved.

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