Travis Neighbor Ward

First published in Space magazine, Spring 2000.

Copyright 2000 Travis Neighbor Ward.

Green and High Technology Meet at an Environmentally Smart Hotel In Philadelphia. Travis Neighbor Ward Checks In and Discovers That Green Is More Glamorous Than You'd Think.

By Travis Neighbor Ward

When it comes to environmental activism I'm your average Jane. Yes, I like the idea of saving the earth. I recycle and I conserve water and electricity whenever possible. But when I stay in a hotel I have only one goal: to forget about the world and relax.

That's why I was a bit wary of the Sheraton Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia, which is touted as "the first environmentally smart hotel in the continental United States." And although this concept is appealing, spending a night surrounded by insistent reminders of my own environmental shortcomings isn't. So I decided to put the hotel to the test, to find out how all of the "environmentally smart" details would affect my experience as a guest.

To my surprise, I found that staying at this Sheraton is pretty much like staying at any other hotel. Other than using the rattan recycling trashcans correctly, a guest's only responsibility is to check in; after that, the hotel takes care of everything.

Take the room, for instance. If Barry Dimson, the hotel's environmental consultant and one of the project's developers, hadn't told me that "nothing in it will ever hit a dump," I would've taken it for no more than an unusually cozy, but otherwise average hotel room.

Yet there's nothing average about it. The sheets and bedspreads are made from organic cotton grown without pesticides. The mattress, as comfy as any I've slept on, is stuffed with organic wool and cotton around a base of recycled steel springs. The night table is constructed of wood that has been "upcycled" from discarded shipping pallets and, like the rest of the furniture, has had its toxic volatile organic compounds sealed into the varnish so they'll never "off-gas" into the room The paint on the walls is non-toxic.

These are just a few of the environmental features in the guest room, but it also contains a 21 inch TV with a Saga game player, an Ethernet jack for super-fast Internet access and salmon pink imported marble in the bathroom. But the star attraction is the air: it's fresh, pumped in straight from outside, What more could one want for the price, other than a mini-bar and a softer pillow?

In a recent Wall Street Journal article exposing the unhealthy air quality in leading hotels nationwide, Dimson's Sheraton was cited as the exception, a hotel that is "going a step further" to better guests' breathing conditions. "The problem is that there are no laws about air quality in hotels," Dimson explains. “Since it costs more to pump in outside air, most hotels don't do it. Plus, they usually have a revolving door on the ground floor and windows that don't open. So the air in these hotels today is the same air that was in them the day they first opened." In this hotel, smoking is strictly prohibited throughout the hotel, even in the bars. Outside air is pumped in through vents on the exterior walls, filtered, and mixed with hot or cold water depending on the season. It's then transported to guests via vents in the bedrooms or bathrooms, while other vents nearby suck out the old air.

For Dimson, the Sheraton Rittenhouse Square represents the beginning of an evolution: his and, he hopes, that of the hotel development business. "For 25 years I was only interested in making money," he admits from the Wall Street offices of his company, EcoSmart Healthy Properties, LLC. "I built buildings the cheapest way I knew how. But then I realized I wanted to do something for the environment. And now I know that if I die tomorrow, I've proven you can run a hotel profitably and make it healthy for the people staying in it and help to conserve natural resources, all at the same time."

"When I started going to developers with this idea four years ago, they told me 'get outta here,"' he recalls. "They didn't want to know the truth because they didn't want to do anything about it. But now they're seeing that I had a point."

Dimson seems to be right. In just seven months the 193-room hotel has almost reached the industry average expected of new hotels three years after opening. In Philly, that means 75 percent occupancy at an average $180 per night

Because many of the systems and products used here have never been tested on such a large scale, the hotel is, in some ways, a guinea pig. "There's a learning curve with green materials," says R.J. Thomberg of Floss Barber, Inc., the interior design firm that worked on the project. "Things don't always work out."

One challenge was to find a wall covering made of something other than the vinyl often found in hotels. "Vinyl is banned in many countries, including Germany and Sweden, because it contains cancer-causing dioxins," says Dimson. "If it catches on fire, it turns into a lethal gas. And because vinyl doesn't breathe, a lot of mold usually grows behind it. We had to pay more for real paper-$17.25 per lineal yard instead of $5-but it's worth it." I'm assuming he means aesthetically--the wallpaper is made of 67 percent polyester and recycled binders and 33 percent cellulose, and looking at it up close, you can see delicate bits of wood pulp woven in.

Unfortunately, the wallpaper is nearly impossible to clean. Rubbing a sponge on it, I'm told, causes it to pill; bumping into it with a trolley cart, as the staff did repeatedly when the hotel opened, causes scuffs. Until the special anti-scuff trolley carts the hotel has ordered arrive, the staff must carry everything, from bed linens to breakfast trays, by hand.

Cleaning was one of the biggest puzzles to solve. "It's not enough to make it green; you've got to maintain it green," Dimson says. To wash bedding, the hotel has provided a laundry service with eco-friendly products and has instructed the service never to use bleach. Hoover vacuums fitted with anti-dust HEPA filters are used to vacuum the carpets.

Some elements were right on the money from day one. These include the granite floor tiles in Spanish stoneite, a "renewed" stone made from granite chips that have been discarded by foundries, pulverized into dust and combined with binding agents to render what is actually a stronger flooring without fault lines.

Then there's the enormous, "super oxygenating" bamboo plant in the groundfloor atrium, which cost $40,000 to buy and install. Comprised of 18 stalks in a single pot, the bamboo sits below a large skylight and is surrounded by two rows of grow lights, left on 12 hours per day. Bamboo, Dimson explains, grows 60 feet per year and gives off 35 percent more oxygen than any other tree or plant on the planet. And it's sustainable, meaning that if you take care of it and cut it correctly, it will keep growing for more than 100,000 years.

As for the hotel furniture, it's either made from trees that have been culled after they've fallen or broken of their own accord, or from natural wild grasses.

Then there are other, less obvious details that are still in keeping with the eco-master plan: room number signs made of recycled glass; lamps that use 22-watt, circular compact fluorescent bulbs, which give off the same light as 100 watt incandescents but use that much less energy.

The next day, after I've checked out and am waiting for the valet to return with my car, I am glad to have done my part to help save the planet-and it was so easy. If all hotels were like this one, I could help out every time I travel. Then I remember what Barry Dimson told me, paraphrasing his idol, anthropologist and environmentalist Jane Goodall: "pick one problem and give it your best." He adds: "even if you don't achieve your goal, at least you've opened a path to someone else who might make a difference."

Sheraton Rittenhouse Square, 215-645-9400

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