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The greening of the U.S. lodging industry is continuing, the American Hotel & Lodging Association (AH&LA) 2012 Lodging Survey shows. 

More than 52,000 U.S. hotel properties were polled in the survey, funded by the American Hotel & Lodging Educational Foundation (AH&LEF) and conducted by STR and conducted every two years. Similar data has been collected since 1988. There was a healthy response rate of 23 percent to this year’s survey.

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With 215 million adults in this country, an estimated 41 million of those are LOHAS consumers (consumers dedicated to Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability) and they represent a marketplace of about $290 billion dollars, “but their power as a consumer market remains virtually untapped” (www.lohas.com).  With numbers like these, businesses can’t afford not to make steps towards addressing this market and becoming part of the environmental initiation. It’s like an untapped oil field, but instead of wreaking havoc on the Earth you’re actually promoting the planet’s health.

The chlorine in your pool can cause more serious damage than red eyes, dry skin and faded swimwear. According to the EPA, chlorine can irritate the respiratory system, especially in individuals that already suffer from allergies and asthma. And scientists are beginning to suspect that chlorinated water contains chemical compounds that become carcinogenic when they interact with organic matter in a pool, such as leaves, according to British environmental landscape architect and natural swimming pool advocate Michael Littlewood.

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This week on Nature of Business I talked energy with Kim Hayden, a partner at Downs Rachlin Martin, PLLC (DRM). We spoke of the state of energy law and regulation in this country, in the Northeast region in particular, market barriers to alternative energy implementation, renewable portfolio standards and much more.

“It’s a good time to be a female entrepreneur,” says Caitin Berens of Inc. Indeed, women-owned businesses have grown by over 54 percent since 1997 at a rate 1.5 times that of the national average, according to a recent American Express OPEN study.  Nearly one third of all businesses (or 8.3 million) are now female-owned. The education, health care and social assistance, as well as arts, entertainment and recreation sectors in particular have seen the fastest growth in the number of women-owned businesses in the past decade.

There are two money-making reasons your business must recycle. First, your business is probably among the businesses that annually push $11 billion of recyclable materials out your back door into someone else’s pocket or even worse just throw away into a landfill.

For most wheelchair users, the simple act of driving means paying $100,000 or more for a modified vehicle. Cheaper modifications are available in some cases, but typically require drivers to physically drag their wheelchairs over themselves to get into the driver’s seat – a feat of upper-body strength that is impossible for some.

An innovative housing development is set to get underway in Dunedin, Florida that will see the creation of the first affordable LEED Certified Net Zero Energy townhome development in the US. The Eco-Village will consist of 25 townhomes, all of which are designed and engineered to maximize energy efficiency. Developer Planet Green Group aims to make eco-friendly as well as affordable.

New Jersey’s Public Service Electric & Gas (PSE&G) is poised to request the state’s regulators to approve as much as $883 million of additional investment to expand its solar power programs, according to a Reuters report.Approval would result in Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG), PSE&G’s parent company, being able to add an overall total of roughly 395 MW of solar power capacity to the mid-Atlantic state’s increasingly clean and renewable energy mix.

Some of the most impactful out-of-the-box sustainability ideas start inside the box.

For evidence, look no further than high-tech giant Dell's recent fiscal year 2012 corporate responsibility report.

Over the past four years, Dell has reduced packaging size by 12 percent while simultaneously boosting the recyclable or renewable content by 40 percent.

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