IHG’s Green Engage program is addressing the severe drought conditions in California by providing Water Conservation Kits to 230 hotels across the state. The effort supports the company’s target of reducing water use per occupied room in water-stressed areas by 12% by 2017.
The Water Conservation Kits include water faucet aerators for guest bathrooms that can reduce consumption by 30% and potentially save 77 million gallons of water per year in California. They also offer examples of how other hotels have been successful in their water conservation efforts as well as guidance on water-efficient appliances and native-plan landscape designs that require less water.
Examples in California include the Hotel Indigo San Diego-Gaslamp Quarter, which has a garden with native plants requiring little water covering nearly 40% of the rooftop to create a greenhouse effect. The InterContinental San Francisco, a LEED Gold hotel, saves an estimated 2 million gallons of water a year with low-flow faucets, toilets and other back-of-house water-restriction features. The hotel implemented a sustainable HVAC cooling water-treatment system that has contributed to about 1 million gallons of water saved per year. The hotel is taking it a step further by installing waterless urinals in all public restrooms, estimated to save a another half-million gallons of water per year.