Environmentally Green Hotel Initiatives
You’ve checked into your hotel and checked out your accommodations. You’ve also scoped out the surroundings for food, drink and fun activities. But did you stop for a minute to ponder how you might be helping lower your carbon footprint just by staying at your favorite Newport Beach property? While most properties from the Balboa Bay Resort to Island Hotel Newport Beach practice some type of green initiatives, here are some local hotels that have gone above and beyond when it comes to making sure guests have the best luxury — and eco-friendly — experience possible.
You’ll be wowed by this seaside resort’s 36-hole golf course designed by renowned architect Tom Fazio, not to mention the acclaimed Golf Club and Academy, Italian architecture, lavish accommodations and top-notch dining. But underneath all of the glitz and glamour, you’ll find The Resort at Pelican Hill is working overtime to be a good steward of one of California’s most beautiful stretches of coastal land. Encompassing 504 acres, the land includes 80 acres of protected habitat where you can find a multitude of animal species including coyotes, bobcats, birds of prey, Great Egret, Roadrunners, rattlesnakes, California gnatcatchers, an array of waterfowl, and even shorebirds like the Whimbrel and Willet. The Resort at Pelican Hill also has set a new standard for green golf resorts, with its environmentally friendly water-management system based on conservation and recycling garnering Golf Magazine’s “Eco-friendly Green Hall of Fame Award.”
This hotel’s Green Partnership Program, in place 20-plus years now, leads the way when it comes to sustainable food sourcing. Three rooftop beehives contain thousands of bees and supply the hotel with savory and flavorful honey that the culinary team harvests and extracts from the hives in partnership with the O.C.-based business Backyard Bees. The honey is incorporated into many of the hotel’s recipes, including honey truffles and honey goat cheese, and the beeswax is used to make a Honey Cream moisturizing emulsion. Fairmont Newport Beach also adopted seven goats at Ontario’s Drake Family Farms Goat Dairy in 2011, using the goat’s milk to produce organic and sustainable goat cheese and soap, and purchases local, organic, Fair Trade and sustainable food products.
It’s easy to be green at the Hyatt Regency Newport Beach, where a “Green Team” works to promote environmental awareness through staff education, progressive energy conservation and waste-reduction strategies. For example, employees volunteer in Back Bay Restoration, helping remove non-native plans and adding native plantings at OCParks’ Nature Preserve Habitat, while the hotel’s “Meet and Be Green” program encourages groups holding conferences at the property to make less of an impact on the environment by providing conveniently located recycling bins, filtered water stations, locally grown and sourced products, and much more. The hotel also is currently working on implementing a water-conservation program to help with the drought that California is experiencing.
*Photo Courtesy of Fairmont Hotels & Resorts
