Chatterbox: Focused efforts will change the world

Many years ago, my husband and I vacationed in the Florida Keys, including Key Largo … no, seriously … and yes, the magic of Bogart and Bacall and their classic film did make the visit seem more romantic, though it was rather a perfunctory journey.
However, the difficulty in getting fresh water supplied to the Keys at the time, made the supply less than abundant. As a result, all hotels there asked their guests to conserve water, and provided simple instructions on how to do so, if willing to participate.
At that time, American hotels automatically changed all bed linens every day but, in the Keys, they would be changed every third day unless otherwise requested, or the guests checked out. There was a card that should be left on the pillow to let the housekeeper know fresh sheets were desired. Towels to be reused should be hung where they would dry and all others should be left on the floor.
Today, hotels across the country have followed suit. There are signs around the rooms to inform us that they won’t automatically supply fresh linens or towels every day. As in the Keys, the bed cards and tossed towels are used to guide housekeepers. Unlike the Keys, it has nothing to do with water. It’s part of a plan supposedly all done in the name of Mother Earth.
In view of what’s going on in our legislation, what’s happening with global warming, and big business, it’s an absolute joke. Millions of single use plastic items, often split seconds of use like coffee stirrers, are not really recycled. Manufactured to the delight of stockholders in the petroleum industry, they end up choking sea life or being blasted into micro-particles that are now literally encasing our planet. Meanwhile viable, planet-friendly alternatives are dying on the vine, literally.
It’s obvious that the motive behind the hotel industry’s green movement is more monetary than planetary, more workload than world love. Over many years, I have been taking notice of what green measures hotels have been taking and it doesn’t amount to much other than their laundry.
Still in use are: Styrofoam and plastic cups; plastic coffee stirrers or plastic spoons, some even in plastic wrappers, just to add insult to injury; those thimble sized, individual plastic containers providing dribbles of cream, toiletries dispensed by way of miniature plastic bottles, soap bars in plastic wrappers and many hotels still line every pail and ice bucket with a plastic bag. Some hotels do all of these things – and those are just the in-room offenses.

If their plan, initially called Project Green Planet, was really for the benefit of the world, the hotel industry could help the environment far more seriously, and, ironically, save a lot more money doing it. They could provide reusable cups and mugs for beverages, use stirrers and straws made of wood, spun paper or bamboo. They could replace bars of hand soap on every sink with refillable bottles of liquid soap, install wall mounted, refillable dispensers in the showers for body wash gels, shampoo, etcetera, and line pails with waxed paper bags which are cheaper, bio-degradable, and water resistant enough to do the job.
Much of our packaging could revert to packaging more like what we had before plastic. It all worked great; even the old waxed cardboard milk containers were highly durable. As for the breakable glass, that can be improved and, remember, glass is still best for foods while plastic is toxic.
Most packages which worked perfectly well in their original, less expensive state, and were created from renewable/planet-friendly resources have, today, been recreated from the oh-so-profitable, petroleum based, oil industry’s great snake oil dream – plastic.
The offenses are ubiquitous and, in all fairness, hotels are just the cold breeze wafting off the tip of the iceberg. And recycling, well, we’ve always known, that’s just a red herring.
In thousands of other applications, which we can’t seem to get through a day without having to deal with, plastic can and should be disposed of. Once created, however, it can’t be destroyed and particles have been found all around the world, coating, not dusting the planet.
As the new substitute, bamboo is king. It even trumps paper, as it’s cheap, grows fast, can be made into anything and, fear not, its growth can be controlled. We just need to get the oil influence out of power.
This is a June 25, 2009 column updated.

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