The Maya Boutique Hotel - Going Green in Style

Positioned in the snow covered mountains of Switzerland, overlooking a gorgeous valley, and next to a world class skii resort - how much better could it get?  The Maya Boutique Hotel in Nax, Switzerland out did themselves!  Not only are they located in one of the most beautiful spots in the world but they are protecting the environment by doing what they refer to as "what simply makes sense".  Made out of straw bales and using as little energy as possible, they created a hotel that is unique in all aspects and cannot be found anywhere else.

Their sheer humbleness is what astonished me the most.  They have won many awards in sustainability as well as innovation in major conferences from London to Paris.  Not just that, they are only 3 years old!  The family ran hotel is nothing short of spectacular due to the owners passion for hospitality and "doing the right thing".

It is amazing to find out that the hotel is made completely of straw bales compacted together to make nearly unbreakable and insulating walls.  They are about 3 feet thick and are used everywhere within the hotel from the dining room to the guest bedrooms.  The outer part is covered in plaster, and some places wood.  The wood is mainly there to keep with the traditional swiss chalet theme.  Then the inside is covered with natural clay.  This was a very intelligent choice by the owner as the clay allows the rooms to go without ventilation as the clay absorbs excess moisture and heat.  This is the first hotel ever to be built completely out of straw bales!

In the technical aspects, they have quite a bit of environmentally-friendly energy saving equipment.  To heat hot water they use solar tubes which are extremely efficient, especially in Valais due to the sheer amount of sunshine.  Not just that, they have a clay oven that not only cooks dinner but also heats the whole lodging because it captures excess cooking heat through copper tubing that winds through the entire closed circuit system.  By relying on these two sources of heat along with the straw bale insulation, this hotel barely needs to spend to heat the hotel during the cold swiss winter.  The straw bales work wonders to keep the heat trapped in the hotel during the winter and keep the heat out during the summer.  On top of the interesting heating systems they use, they even have their own personal energy management system.  It is a top of the line personally designed management system that can change the heating elements due to their uses or preferences with the touch of a finger.  It is truly something you need to see in person to understand.

In regards to the design, they decided to keep it eco-swiss.  They try to use as many sustainable materials as possible all the while keeping with the traditional swiss theme to preserve the local culture.  Their worst nightmare would to become a modern looking eyesore on the top of a mountain clashing with the traditional swiss architecture.  To be even more culturally correct, the dividers used to separate each room are made out of clippings from the grape vines that grow all around the valley.  It looks just as amazing as it is sustainable.  Each room has its own look and feel which makes all 8 of their rooms truly unique.

 Finally, in my personal opinion the coolest part of their hotel is their mini sauna chalet.  It is a cute little circular cabin that they made into a sauna - with a view.  On the other side of the sauna they have a window that looks directly over the valley all the way to the other sets of mountains.

Overall this was a great trip!  I really appreciate the Maya Boutique Hotel letting us take this field trip!  I can't wait until I get to stay here as a guest!

Persuading Others to Go Green

Ever tried to tell someone how easy it is to recycle just to be brushed off, or in some instances be called a hippie?  These days people take it as if you are trying to spread a political message when you are trying to teach people how to be green and eco-friendly.  I am writing this post not to convince people to shove "going green" down peoples throats, but instead help people understand why we all should be green.

One of the arguments business owners use to explain why they continue to pollute is because many are convinced that there is no such thing as global warming and that it's simply a natural phenomenon not at all impacted by human behavior.  To them this nullifies the idea that humans are able to make a sizable impact on the earth through their pollutants and eco-friendly ways equally.  Even if this is your view, I completely respect your ability to decide for yourself what you agree with or disagree with.  However, you don't need to be convinced of global warming to go green just as people don't need to be convinced they are fat to get healthy. Just in case that you are wrong, or just by realizing that we have technologies that allow you to do the same job without polluting wouldn't you want to do that instead?  Isn't it nicer to breathe fresh air instead of smog, not just for future generations but for yourself as well?

Another one of the common arguments for not making a change is that one action by one person isn't going to save the world.  While that is true, this argument is invalid since there are already many people making the efforts needed to reduce the pressure on the environment.  Each and every other helping hand will start to make a bigger and bigger impact upon our polluting ways.  If they are able to get their entire company involved this means that not only are they themselves reducing their carbon footprint but they are reducing their consumers carbon footprints as well.  Our actions don't just follow a straight line to their consequence, everything is interlinked and by making one change many other elements are affected as well.  Thus if you take a mug instead of a disposable cup for your coffee every day not only are you saving many pieces of plastic from being thrown out, you are also slowing down the demand for their production, saving an animals life, reducing the need to drill oil, creating jobs for mug vendors, and so much more.

Going green is easy if you take small steps.  Many people believe that its expensive and you need to buy heavy duty equipment such as solar panels to even make a dent.  Although those products do help, you are doing just as much good by recycling, purchasing bio products, and spreading awareness.  Businesses are afraid that high numbers on their sustainability reports are going to make them look bad in comparison to other businesses and thus they completely give up on going green.  Instead I suggest making small cheap changes until you are ready to make the larger changes to get better numbers.  This should not be considered a competition - being good to mother nature is good no matter how much or how little you do as long as you are trying to make a difference.

I am no stranger to people opposing my ways, these are just some of the arguments that I use to convince people otherwise to understand being green from my perspective.  Unfortunately there will always be certain groups of people that don't want to hear any of our "nonsense" because they have better things to do than protect the planet, they have other places to consume consume consume, they are above going green.  They are not the reason to give up, they are the reason to continue to be green because you know not only are you making up for your waste but you are making up for theirs too.  In a perfect world everyone would come together to start making changes because they realize the gravity of the situation but until we find the solution for  a perfect world keep progressing through the difficulty and be the one to stand up and do the right thing.

If you are struggling to find supporters to your green movement, or you are trying to convince your business partners to go green... don't forget if it doesn't work now sooner or later the laws will catch  up to them and that's when real change will start happening globally; when its no longer down to choice but up to necessity.

Small change, big rewards: Showers

You stand in the hot shower still trying to wake up from the alarm clock at 6 AM trying to get ready for work in your still sleep deprived state.  You turn the faucet on and wait for it to heat up, and then you step in and groggily let the water pour over you as if the water is your batch of morning coffee - opening  your eyes slowly.  Finally you shower up and before you know it you've been in there for a good 15 minutes.  You've only just started your day and you have already used 33 gallons of water. That's more water than is suggested to drink in 4 days.

Personal Background

Sadly to say, when I first began tracking my water, electricity, and fuel use last month this is what I found.  I was astonished how wasteful I was being with all of this potable water going down the drain.  I started creating this environmental calculator to create my baseline levels, but after 12 days of seeing how much water I was wasting I was determined to put it to a stop.  I decided to make a small change, which in turn created a large change.

Steps to Saving Water - The Easy Way

#1:

Instead of sitting in the shower with the water running when I don't necessarily use it, I simply flipped the switch and turned it off for those periods.  Its crazy how simple it is.  The bathroom is already heated from the water that was running to wet your hair and get the soap all lathered that when its time to actually shampoo you don't need it to keep you warm.  Also, the amount of water that you save during that time turns your 15 minute showers into more of 5 minute showers - which are just as comfortable.

Don't get me wrong, I still spend about 15 minutes IN the shower, I just don't need the water running the entire time.  I work in the hospitality industry thus I need to be as presentable as possible; but why not try to have a smaller impact on the environment?

#2:

Repeat #1 for the entire month.  I made sure to make it a point to turn off the water.  Some days I accidentally reverted to my old ways - it is fun to take a nice hot steamy shower once in a while, but I was determined to change my unsustainable ways.  

#3:

See how much you are saving, and use that as motivation to continue.  I have tracked my entire month worth of water use.  I am shocked to see the results of my small change.  On my Shower Water Usage graph you can see that within the first 12 days of the month (before I made my changes) I was using over 64% of the shower water I used for the entire month! That's only 2/5th's of the month with over 3/5th's of the water use.

Overall Findings

In the end of my month long experiment with water, I found that I don't want this to be the end.  I have even made predictions for the future.  If I changed my average shower use from an average of 13.3 minutes (29.5 gallons per shower) to 5.7 minutes (12.7 gallons of water)  I would be able to save 16.6 gallons per day.  At the end of the year that puts me at a saving of 6082 gallons.  That is enough drinking water for the entire country of Tuvalu for a day.  Granted its small - about 11,000 residents, but still enough water to drink for an entire COUNTRY would be going down my drain in just a year had I not changed my ways.

I am not saying that you should be unreasonable when trying to save the planet, you and I are both people with typical habits that are hard to change.  However, the way we take our showers is such an easy change that it leaves me asking WHY NOT?  Why not help change the world, put the water on hold and see how much you can save!

Ecofriendly Life: Beginning Baseline Measurements

The sound of crumpled up plastic brushing against the sides of the dumpster muffled out the singing birds today.  I killed the beautiful music of nature today with my weekly routine of taking out the trash.  I am living the all too familiar life of a college student too busy to care about how their choices affect the world.  It seems as if this business keeps us all trapped inside a little perfect bubble never really seeing the damaging implications of our wasteful consumerism.  As the dumpster lid slammed shut with a bang and nature returned back to normal - I vowed to myself that I will do what I can to stop disrupting its natural flow with my decisions.

Many of us have been there, living a life that we knew wasn't "green" and yet didn't really know where to start to get better.  Recycle? Take shorter showers? Replace the lightbulbs?  These are all great ideas but they all miss out on the cornerstone of the effort which is to make a difference.

How are we supposed to know how much of a difference we have made by being more environmentally friendly if we never knew how bad we were for mother earth to begin with?  This is why I decided to take my carbon footprint.

Online, there are a myriad of sites dedicated to helping you calculate your carbon foot print. I personally used the following to obtain my results:

• nature.org
• carbonfootprint.com
• footprint.wwf.org.uk
• carbonfootprint.c2es.org
• 3.epa.gov/carbon-footprint-calculator/
• footprintnetwork.org

Overall, my results revealed to me exactly what I thought - I am starting off quite wasteful.  For me this is a challenge, to go from needing 3.5 Earths to maintain my lifestyle to needing less than 1.  I did notice, however, that there are discrepancies in the different tests, so from now on I will be using these 6 to track my progress as they all measure slightly different green practices.

The main thing I want to highlight about taking this baseline test is that no matter the number you should not be ashamed to publish it.  Many companies these days refuse to post their environment friendliness rating because they feel that it would be bad press.  I would like to argue the contrary - it's good press because even though you might not have the most sustainable numbers you are realizing that and are openly making a change.  This public change might even inspire others to take on the same goal of becoming more sustainable and thus as a team make the world a better place. 

Please share your numbers, I hope you enjoy seeing where you fall within the carbon footprint spectrum.  Even if you have a very high number, don't worry  - everyone needs to start somewhere.

Making CSR Personal

First, lets start off with the question what is CSR? 

Heading Down the Right Path - Responsibility

Its a word passed around in business these days that sometimes gets confused with philanthropy or sustainability.  Although these are elements of CSR, one section of the program does not define it as a whole.  CSR is the overall process ensuring that your business is running ethically and responsibly - not just focusing on one side of the coin (environment, HR practices, philanthropy).  If the general idea of CSR is mainly about responsibility, why do we leave it in the office after the day of work is done?  We pack up the papers, put it in the drawer, and as soon as we walk out it is as if all of the responsibility we try to give to our business flies out the window of our huge SUV as we start revving the engine on our way out from the parking lot.  If we are putting so much effort into our businesses CSR plan, and we understand its importance - what is stopping us from personally living responsibly?  Shouldn't we make it our personal mission to also be living ethically within our own personal brand we all call "ME".

I know that we as people are much smaller than a corporation, but we are the ones that can make the biggest change.  If you ask yourself why your company started using CSR practices its not because it makes more profits, but because that is what your customers demand.  If we go out living our personal lives using the same methodology as CSR we would have even more influence on the economy and the businesses around us - spurring more change than already is happening. One man is just as important as the many because one man can inspire the masses - and hopefully this time it is to do the right thing.

Most people consider themselves to be contributing members of society, but is there a more effective way to inspiring change? To become a more responsible citizen I suggest taking your drive to do the right thing and apply the CSR methods of tracking, goal setting, and achieving so as to create a new hybrid "personal social responsibility".  This way people themselves are able to track themselves doing the right thing and improving over time - just as any business would, allowing measurable results and efficiency in the process.

Although I try to do my best to help make a positive impact, I feel that by haphazardly doing it I am actually taking away from what I could truly achieve. That is why I am beginning the personal CSR journey today by starting with my baseline.  I will track my data for all of next week containing my sustainability info, social responsibility, and overall impact and then post a report. Then I will start making goals and striving to achieve even more than before.  I hope if you found this interesting you can join me on my personal CSR journey.

CSR doesn't just have to be for businesses - its a way of life.