Stacey Higgins: "Hi I'm Stacey Higgins from HotelNewsNow.com. Here at the Hilton San Francisco Union Square, the staff of the 1,908-room hotel has a dedication to stewardship—stewardship toward the environment and the community. We spoke with various executives from operations about the processes and procedures that make this an award-winning hotel in recycling and energy conservation. Let's take a look."
Jo Licata, Community projects manager: "Hi Stacey, I'm Jo Licata, the community projects manager of the Hilton San Francisco Union Square. Well, you've mentioned and we've heard a lot about the triple bottom line, which is: people, plant and profit. And even before we heard the term triple bottom line, I'm very proud to say this hotel was involved in many aspects of that philosophy. For more than 20 years our hotel has had an aggressive recycling program. We started with cardboard and all of the usual suspects in terms of recycling: paper, bottles, cans. But then it really evolved. And we've also talked about the fact of community and sustainability, which are not mutually exclusive. If you are involved with community stewardship, you are involved with the stewardship of our precious resources, and that certainly is a benefit to the community."
Higgins: "The Hilton San Francisco Union Square achieved a 65-percent waste diversion rate in 2008. Among the things they recycle; white and mixed paper, cardboard, glass, aluminum, organics, wooden pallets, furniture and computers. Here's Brian Mork, director of property operations to tell you more."
Mork: "We recycle just about anything and everything we can. Your standard stuff. Your bottles, your paper, your plastic bottles, your cans. We recycle all of our scrap metal. Everything that you have to recycle. All of your fluorescent bulbs, all of your batteries and stuff like that. We've just replaced all of our equipment down in the laundry. And we went through a real in-depth study to figure out which washer out on the market was going to give us the best utility savings. Water expense is very expensive here in the City of San Francisco so we wanted to find the most water efficient one on the market, and really, it has a built-in water reclaim system, so the water that you ring out in the end is basically used for your first wash, and so on."
Higgins: "In addition to its water conservation efforts, the hotel also focuses on organic and locally farmed produce. Stefan Gruvberger, director of food & beverage tells us more."
Gruvberger: "The City of San Francisco about a year ago went out to all the restaurants, not with a law, but more of a request of trying to get away from bottled water completely. So what we did is we took that to heart and we installed a water filtration system in our restaurant that also has carbonation. And so what we do for that is distilled water we just serve for free to people. If you want to have sparkling water, again it's filtered water, we charge $1 per person and we donate part of the proceeds to the Ocean Conservancy.
"… We source about 80 percent of all the things that we serve in the restaurant locally. Luckily we are in Northern California, so it makes it a little bit easier for us, but it was also a real effort both from a corporate level as well as a hotel level to make sure that we purchase on a local level and also that we do it seasonally. I think one of the things that people think of right away is that it's going to cost you more money to be sustainable and to be green. It's actually, we found it the other way around because it forces us to take a look at our menus and for example, again I'll use the strawberries as an example. To look and not buy strawberries when they cost a whole lot of money. You're importing them from Mexico, or wherever you are importing them from. Instead of changing that on our breakfast buffets for example to something that is readily available during the winter and also thereby a lot cheaper to buy. So I think that is one of the big hurdles that people are having. 'Oh, it's going to cost a lot of money." But it really doesn't have to. It actually is the other way around. "
Higgins: "Green meetings are big business for the Hilton San Francisco Union Square. From donating conference bags to eliminating water bottles, the hotel staff helps meeting planners achieve a more earth-friendly event. Scott Baublitz, director of sales and marketing, knows how to make it work."
Baublitz: "From a marketing standpoint, it's sustainability, conservation, it's everyone's responsibility. And I think the marketing effort really goes down to the individual guest that is walking in the door. We're trying to have them understand what we're trying to do and essentially embrace that with their stay and undertake the efforts whether it's using the recycle bag that's in the room to separate out their disposables or whatever it is. From the sales and marketing side, from the bigger picture, we've produced video. We've produced a piece that shows in the individual guestroom as well as a sales video so people can take it on the road and show them the efforts that we're putting forth. It's something that a portion of our customers love, they love to see that. They are being asked to do it and in many cases they're not really sure how to do it, so we are able to help them by showing them what we do on a daily basis."
