Seven Hotels Recognized as Delaware Green Lodging Hotels

Environmentally-friendly Practices Set Green Hotels Apart

Seven hotels recently received Delaware Green Lodging certification for implementing basic green lodging practices that conserve natural resources, save money and enhance their marketing potentials as environmentally-responsible businesses. The announcement, which brings the total number of Green Lodging Hotels in Delaware to twelve, was made by program partners – the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control and the Delaware Hotel and Lodging Association.

“Green hotels have responded to consumer demands by changing to more environmentally-friendly and sustainable practices,” said Crystal Nagyiski, Delaware Green Lodging program manager. “By incorporating green practices in the way they do business, green hotels have set themselves apart from the competition.”

The seven hotels recognized were: Quality Inn & Suites, New Castle; Holiday Inn Express, Bethany Beach and Rehoboth Beach; the Atlantis Inn, Rehoboth Beach; Embassy Suites, Newark; the Awaken Inn, Millsboro; and The Biden Environmental Training Center, Lewes. To qualify for the program, the hotels implemented five basic green lodging practices – recycling, water conservation, optional linen service, energy conservation and a “green events” package.

DNREC’s website includes an overview of the Delaware Green Lodging program, the checklist businesses need to complete to qualify and other information. A list of participating businesses and environmentally-friendly practices implemented is also included. Visit www.dnrec.delaware.gov/p2/Pages/GreenLodging.aspx.

The Delaware Green Lodging Program is a voluntary, self-certifying program that encourages hotels, resorts and other hospitality facilities to understand their impacts to the environment and implement pollution prevention practices. Facilities that meet the requirements receive a certificate and window decals and can display the Delaware Green Lodging logo on marketing materials. In addition, Green
Lodging hotels are listed on the program website and are eligible to participate in grant opportunities.

For more information on the Green Lodging or other Pollution Prevention programs, contact Crystal Nagyiski at (302) 739-9072 or crystal.nagyiski@state.de.us.

$1 Million Grant Will Help Build a ”Green Jobs” School in Philadelphia

by KYW’s Mike DeNardo

A former factory in Kensington is being transformed into an adult vocational school for “green” jobs, thanks to a big-time grant.

The nonprofit Energy Coordinating Agency is getting a grant of more than $1 million from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to retrofit the Kensington factory to train workers in weatherization and solar technology.

ECA’s executive director is Liz Robinson:

“We own a massive old factory that used to make Civil War uniforms.  And we’re retooling this wonderful building to, frankly, make a revolution in energy efficiency in neighborhoods.”

Mayor Nutter (above right) says the new building science center will train hundreds of workers this year:

“I soon expect that Philadelphia will be the nation’s capital of green jobs.”

Nutter says the first class begins training at the center in April.

(Photos by KYW’s Mike DeNardo)

Green Living – Tips for Conservation & a Greener Planet

Making green changes in your lifestyle is an easy way to get more enjoyment out of your life and help to conserve the natural resources of our planet. It is in our hands as individuals to protect and preserve our home. World governments and the corporations that feed their pockets with gold have never and will never care about the environment – they care about cash. When you make the decisive commitment to initiate a plan for green living in your family, you help to make your community and the world in general a more holistically natural and healthy place for us all to live and thrive. Here are some tips to begin your new green lifestyle with:

Tip 1:

Knowledge is power. You have to understand the problems at hand to be able to deal with them effectively. The environment has been being attacked for decades and decades from pollution-causing manufacturing plants and governmental agencies who do far less than not caring. Truths have been consistently masked and hidden from the public in the name of increased profit margins. To believe otherwise is both ludicrous and self-destructive. This is your planet! Stand up and fight for it. Educate yourself and grow in knowledge. Use that knowledge to force your elected leaders into positive action that addresses the urgent environmental issues at hand. Be a green mover; become a green knowledge bank!

It’s not enough to simply be aware of the problems that are destroying our planet; you have to be proactive in your approach to addressing them. Almost everyone acknowledges that there are many things which must be done to reverse the damages done and impede or stop further damage to our planet. That’s no surprise. Taking action is what it’s all about though.

Tip 2:

Change the way that you and your family move around. Transportation of the masses of people around the planet everyday unleashes a devastating amount of toxins into the atmosphere, soil and water. Consider green alternative forms of transportation such as bicycling, scootering, walking or mass transit systems. Explore the possibility of working from home to cut down on your need to travel so much. Ever thought about forming a carpool? If you just can’t see making full-time green changes in your travel habits, maybe you could just change them on a few given days of each week. At a minimum, you should at least be driving a fuel-efficient vehicle. The bottom line is that it is you that must take action. Just do something!

Tip 3:

Green living has a lot to do with intentionally lessening your consumption of energy. You don’t have to spend a hundred thousand dollars transforming your home with wind turbines, solar panels and flux capacitors. You can do simple green things for free like shutting the lights off when you leave a room. Try dropping that thermostat setting a few degrees in the winter and raising it a few degrees in the summer. Buy energy-saving light bulbs and appliances. Ensure that your home, water lines and hot water tanks are thoroughly insulated. You can also periodically inquire about green alternatives with your utility companies. If they never get the requests, they will never embrace the changes necessary.

Tip 4:

Train yourself to embrace healthier eating habits of water-rich foods. It is a very green way to enhance your health while simultaneously saving the planet. The Internet has made it possible to drop ship international foods all around the planet with simple mouse clicks. Shipping products and intensive farming methods have deadly impacts on the environment. Embrace the concept of gardening. Start a compost pile in your backyard and enrich the soil on your land. Eliminate your consumption of inorganic, pesticide and herbicide laden vegetables. Eat less meat. Enjoy the natural, seasonal bounties of nature.

There are many healthful, environmentally-responsible and fun ways to enjoy a greener lifestyle and become a part of an international effort to save our planet. Why should we continue to turn a blind eye towards corrupt governments and corporate entities? Why should they continue to unleash total devastation on our planet – our home? Make at least some small, simplistic changes in your lifestyle today to further the green cause. The rewards that you experience will be far further reaching than you will be able to see.

Phillip runs an awesome green website at http://www.yellowpagesgoesgreen.org/

He wants to call attention to the impact of wasted natural resources and help to advocate the necessity of the Green movement.

You are encouraged to check out the site’s blog at http://ypggblog.com/

Please visit often!

Small Lifestyle Changes Make a Big Difference: Going Green

There are plenty of things you can do as an individual, and a household, that can reduce the damage done to our environment.

The most effective changes you can make to your lifestyle begin, as all the best things do, at home, and the best part is these changes require nothing more than small alterations to your normal routine. The best way to start is to cut down on your energy uses. There are a variety of ways to do this, but start by always ensuring that appliances that are not in used are switched off at the plug – stand-by is not your friend. The same goes for lighting – if you’re not in the room, switch the light off.

You can also save water and energy by only boiling as much water as you need. A good way to do this is to fill whatever mug you’re going to use with cold water, put it in the kettle, half fill the mug again and add this, and boil. You need slightly more than a full cup as boiling produces steam and causes evaporation. On the same water-saving vein, having a bath is far more eco-friendly than using a shower.

Other small changes that will drastically reduce your energy consumption include relying less on heating – if you’re just a bit chilly, put a jumper on rather than reaching for the dial. And for whatever heating you do use, if you foil back your radiators, you will get more heat into the room for the same energy use.

Outside of the home there are still plenty of options. Check and see if your bank or telecoms provider offers paperless billing. This usually means your bill is sent in full to an email account and this is turn really helps the environment. It is also worth investing in some sturdy, long-term canvas bags to use while shopping for groceries – the carrier bag is one of the worst eco-enemies in use today. Complete eradicate it from your weekly shop and your carbon footprint will go into freefall.

The last, and perhaps most obvious, green friendly tip is the three Rs: recycle, recycle, recycle. Separate all your waste products in their appropriate places, so instead of just putting it all in one bin, split it into categories like food waste, garden waste and plastic and then send it to be recycled.

When it comes to being eco friendly, small changes to one person’s habits can make a huge difference to the earth.

Eat Your Greens

Eating Green isn’t all about organics and vegetarianism, although these do, of course, play a part for many people. There is more to it than that, and you can make a big difference to how Green you are by making certain simple changes in your eating and shopping habits. Many of these changes are hardly noticeable, and some will surprise you with how much you prefer them. If you shop around, you will also find that eating and drinking green can be easier on the pocket than the alternative.

The first thing to do if you are concerned about helping the environment is think about where your food comes from – and I mean that in more than one sense. If you shop in supermarkets, for example, you should take a close look at the packaging on what you’re buying. Firstly, how much packaging is there? Often supermarkets will package goods in lots of plastic wrapping – how often, for example, do you see a packet of tomatoes on a plastic tray, wrapped around with a few feet of cling film? This is wholly unnecessary, takes up space, uses energy and has very little practical benefit.

Another consideration ought to be where in the world your food was grown. Some fruit and veg are not grown nearby and if you need to buy – for example – a pineapple then it is hard to find locally-sourced tropical fruit if you live closer to the North Pole than the Equator. If possible, however, it is extremely beneficial to buy locally-grown fruit and veg. The reasons for this are simple. Firstly, if potatoes have just travelled two-and-a-half miles in a van, their impact on the environment is much less than if they’ve travelled from overseas by air or ship. Chances are you won’t have to pay as much for them, as well.

Buying food grown locally needn’t be any hassle. If you have a farm shop near you then why not check out their deals – the relatively low overheads these shops have enable them to keep prices low. If you don’t have a farm shop, then your local greengrocer will have a wide selection of locally-sourced fruit and veg. Next time you’re in, ask them – it’s better for you, better for your wallet and better for the planet.

Household Clean with Green

The average person uses up to two thirds of their total energy consumption while at home, which is a huge chunk of your carbon footprint before you’ve even set foot near a car. A lot of this usage is due to electrical appliances – and the great news is it is possible to save on your energy consumption in this area without buying a new appliance.

For some time now small products, which go by a range of names including “Machine Balls”, have been available for use when doing laundry. The main washing product lets you wash clothes thoroughly but without using any washing powder. These products usually contain various minerals and salts and genuinely are as effective as standard powder but without the chemicals. There’s also a version available for tumble drying, a necessity in winter, which work by helping separate fabric and allowing clothes to dry quicker and therefore the machine is in use for less time. Brilliantly, these products are also infinitely cheaper than washing powder or running a tumble dryer for a long period of time and they work just as well.

There’s plenty of items available for general cleaning, too. There are substitutes for your usual, chemically harsh products that reduce the damage to the environment while still remaining effective. Look around the internet and you’ll find an eco-friendly version of every type of product you currently use, from washing up liquid to furniture polish, and there is little or no difference in price. As well as this, there has been recent innovations for products that require no water or cleaning product at all, as the fabric used is designed in such a way that it cleans even stubborn stains by itself.

The key to household cleaning and being eco-friendly at the same time is looking for products which use natural ingredients only. Some products may also biodegrade quickly, reducing disruption to aquatic life when you’ve washed them away. The growth in the popularity of eco-friendly and natural cleaning products has made all of the well-known manufacturer’s take notice and all are now bringing out their own ranges, meaning you can match the relibility of a well known brand with being kind to the environment. However you do it, using eco-friendly cleaning products will have a dramatic effect on your energy consumption and the overall effect you have on the planet.

The Green Pound

Shopping doesn’t have to be an entirely selfish pursuit, contrary to the rather clichéd belief widely expressed in the media. Of course it’s nice to spoil yourself every once in a while (but not every day, or it stops being a treat and becomes an addiction), but in this day and age shopping also offers many opportunities to have a positive impact on the environment. This begins with the obvious – purchasing environmentally-friendly products which have been produced ethically, organic food or energy-saving items, but includes other aspects in terms of packaging, transport and lifestyle.

If you have shopped in a supermarket recently, then it is likely that you have encountered the concept of a “bagless checkout” – where once you have put your items through the checkout you do not put them into readily supplied plastic bags, but into a “Bag For Life” (something which has been around for some time now) or into a bag that you yourself have brought. It is now fashionable to take with you a fabric bag, lessening the need for a handful of plastic bags which don’t biodegrade when disposed of, causing a real problem in the environment. For the shopper a bag like this has the added convenience of being easier to carry – it can be slung over your shoulder, ending the problem of heavily-filled, thin-strapped plastic bags which cut into your hands.

Many people now are doing their shopping on the Internet. This is helpful to the environment in a number of ways, from something as simple as grocery shopping – multiple deliveries in a single van is much better than several individual cars sitting in traffic jams en route for the supermarket – to one-click shopping at online stores which saves the customer a potential wild goose chase to find a single item and may well necessitate them starting and stopping their car several times in a few hours. This also allows the customer time to consider their purchase, being a much less rushed process. While many people complain about the expense of green products, being able to shop around on the Internet allows them to find a better deal – better for them and better for the world.