We’re happy to see more and more hotels seeking LEED-certification and using sustainable building practices. But, the same green standards are often not applied to interior furnishings. Given that hotels spend more than $1 billion a year on furniture, fixtures and equipment -according to a recent article in Sustainable Business Oregon, it’s time that hotels focus on greening their interiors.
Enter the Hospitality Sustainable Purchasing Consortium (HSPI), which was formed to help improve sustainability across every aspect of the hotel supply chain – Supporting not only green building, but environmentally-friendly operations and furnishing as well.
Here at The Refinishing Touch, we think the Consortium is helping to move the industry in the right direction.
The ten Consortium members come from a variety of industries but share a common goal of helping hotels to find green suppliers. Members include architecture and design firms, manufacturers, logistics companies, sustainability experts, and large hotel brands such as Marriott.
The Consortium hopes to eliminate the use of toxic products and encourages hotels to examine the social impact they have on their communities. The Consortium is currently working on conducting an extensive questionnaire for suppliers, which will then be compiled to create the Hospitality Sustainable Purchasing Index (HSPI). Expected to be complete by early- to mid-2012, the industry-wide database will rank suppliers based on their corporate social responsibility, environmental, and product sustainability.
The HSPI database could have a significant impact on promoting sustainable projects. Consortium member SERA Architects, for example, recently completed renovations at Marriott properties in Portland and Denver, but found it was difficult to find recyclable and environmentally-friendly materials, according to Sustainable Business Oregon. The HSPI database would have been a great resource for the Marriott project, and it will no doubt help many hotels in the future.
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