Let's face it, hotels haven't always been model citizens of the Global Village when it comes to protecting Mother Earth.
How many times have you walked into a hotel room to find the air conditioner blasting. Those freon fueled vicissitudes that control many hotel room climates can not be good for the environment. Furthermore, in the past, hotel and resort developers have cleared forests and moved rivers to get their golf courses, man made beaches, and monolithic resorts in just the right spot. And have you ever seen how liberally some of the cleaning crew uses aerosol spray?
However, what's in the past is in the past, and recently many hotels have become leaders in the green movement. These days, environmentalism is more than a political issue or a hippie pastime, it is a culture.
With that in mind we have culled together the Best Green Hotels in the U.S. that ooze green culture. There are literally thousands of hotels across the world employing green policies of some kind, but these hotels truly represent the best of green culture. Whether you are traveling to Portland, Oregon for business, New Mexico for a getaway, or Santa Cruz to get high and surf, the hotels on this list are for fans of Vanity Fair Green Issue cover cub Knut.
Orchard Garden Hotel, San Francisco
The Orchard Garden makes the green list for a very big reason--it's the only hotel built to the nationally accepted standards for green buildings put forth by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). In-room the hotel employs environmentally friendly policies like a key card energy control system, chemical-free cleaning products, recycling bins, soy-based inks and a strict no-smoking policy.
An added green bonus? During our stay there, one of the elevators smelled like something really green. Plus the hotel is still offering opening intro rates of $169 so it's also a bargain.
Alma Del Monte, Taos, New Mexico
The Alma del Monte, a five-bedroom luxury rental, makes the list for its top-to-bottom green design. The place uses solar panels, rainwater harvesting, has Pumice-crete adobe style walls, an addition made of recycled Styrofoam, low-volume toilets, and energy saving fluorescent light fixtures. The hotel also does composting, recycling, rainwater harvesting and cleaning with green products. Perhaps the best eco-friendly part of the place? The straw bale dog house (shown here) for your furry companions.
Hotel Green, Nantucket, Mass.
With a name like Hotel Green, this little inn in Nantucket from shoe designer Vanessa Noel was bound to get on our best green hotels list. But it's actually green inside too with an organic restaurant, 10 rooms filled with some recycled furniture (think cardboard chairs), hemp towels, artwork with milk-based paints and all-natural cleaning products. Perhaps the piece de resistance here is the web site. The site say it's conserving energy by simply stating its phone number and email address with only a photo page to supplement it. Uh-oh, does this mean green HTML is going to be the next, next thing?