Marriott International has designated April as “Environmental Awareness Month,” inviting its more than 2,700 hotels worldwide to engage in initiatives which help preserve their natural surroundings and reduce resource consumption.The event builds on
Marriott’s award-winning commitment to the environment and gives hotels an
opportunity to continually improve efforts toward cleaner air, recycling,
and water and energy conservation.
  “This month is a way for hotels to renew their existing energy
conservation campaigns and look at new and different ways to support our
environmental commitment,” said Pat Maher, senior vice president of
Engineering for North America, Marriott International.
  “Protecting the environment and conserving energy make good business
sense and are the right things to do, both locally and globally,” said Gary
Hurst, senior vice president of International Engineering, Marriott
International.
  Eco-themed competitions, including a poster contest, are being offered
at hotels worldwide to generate momentum among associates. The following
provides highlights of other hotel initiatives from around the world:
  Egypt—On April 8, 275 associates from seven Marriott hotels in Egypt
cleaned up trash on the streets and beaches to create a cleaner and
healthier environment.
  Jordan—Associates at all three Marriott hotels in Jordan will host a
roundtable discussion with an energy consultant; learn more about local
eco- systems through the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature
during Earth Day on April 22; participate in clean-up efforts in their
local communities; and contribute funds to care for the endangered species
in a local wildlife reserve.
  United Kingdom—At Marriott’s regional office in London, a newly
formed environmental committee is launching an awareness campaign among the
office’s 400 associates to increase recycling, decrease waste, and conserve
energy.
  United States—The engineering team at the New York Marriott Marquis,
which in the last year has installed new energy-efficient lighting
throughout the hotel and re-commissioned its air handling units for better
air quality and lower energy consumption, will install lighting motion
sensors in the hotels’ forty linen closets.
  The San Francisco Marriott, adjacent to the Moscone Convention Center,
is the first hotel in the city to have a compactor dedicated to composting
foodstuffs, and its associates are putting it to good use. They are more
than halfway to reaching their goal of composting a million pounds of
material from the hotel’s restaurants and cafeterias. On average, 85
percent of the hotel’s food refuse can be composted and reused to help
revitalize the soil within the region. Last year, the hotel composted
half-a-million pounds of material—enough to fill its lobby from floor to
ceiling.
  In the Washington, D.C., metro area, approximately 100 associates from
Marriott Headquarters and nearby Marriott hotels participated in the
Potomac Watershed Clean-up Day on April 8. Volunteers removed trash and
debris from the shorelines of Theodore Roosevelt Island, a national
landmark protected by the National Park Service.
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