Cranky Customer

I spend a fair amount of time in hotels, and I have seen many such cards on nightstands and bathroom sinks. I have always assumed that the hotel management was not really interested in the environment, but for a different reason than has been described in the subject story and related posts. It was always my belief that they were actually interested in saving money by doing less laundry, and if there was some ancillary environmental benefit, that was icing on the cake. Now I'm not so sure, unless someone else has come along with a new cost-benefit analysis to determine that washing everyone's towels and sheets saves more in labor costs than is saved in water and detergent to go room-by-room and do less laundry....

I guess I've been one of the lucky ones. In ten years of traveling with/for the Air Force I never encountered this problem. Dropped towels were removed, hung up towels were not (pretty much even odds whether a towel on sink would be taken on the first day -- definitely gone on the second).

Then again, most of the places I stayed were on military installations, where "Doing More With Less" has been a budgeting way of life for the whole of my career. ;-)

Not to mention that people in the Air Force are used to following orders from "management"! -rc

I read this at a time I was staying in a hotel in Atlanta, GA. and the same is true here too.

I can only guess the cleaning crew is washing them as job security.

I lived in 3 hotels for a year while I was working, staying about 3 weeks in one, 10 weeks in another and 8 months in a suite hotel.

I had my own shampoo and soap. They would leave the new bottles of shampoo and conditioner and soap every time they cleaned the room. I would even ask the housekeepers not to leave the supplies and they still did. They said to keep them. Hello, I used my own shampoo while I was there. Obviously I did not prefer the sample bottles.

I passed the samples on to the homeless shelter.

As a member of the National Association of Environmental Professionals and a life-long traveller, I've long been concerned about this and find that "walking the walk" varies from hotel to hotel even in the same chain. At a recent 3-week stay in North Dakota I had to resort to the "Do not disturb" sign, even after specifically requesting three times that management honor their environmental promise.

This reminds me of my own company's "recycling" policy. Several years ago, we were all issued secondary trash cans so we could separate our paper trash from the rest. Big "paper only" bins were put in all the copy rooms. Emails went out saying how the company was going to recycle tons of paper now. But I happen to be one of those who works really late sometimes and I noticed that the cleaning crew guy just dumps both cans of garbage into the same rolling bin. In my terrible Spanish I asked him why. He shrugged and said that's what he's always done. No one told him to do any different.

Another variant of this started during the California drought a few years back. Hotels started to install restricted water-saving showerheads, leaving the "eco note" in your room to explain that they were being good citizens by saving water.

However, not only did these annoying water trickle devices not disappear after the drought, they started to show up in places that never had a drought in the first place. Hotel managers had found substantial saving in their water and heating bills…so eco-friendly pays, whether it really is or not.

As I read Cranky Customer and Jumbo Joke this morning, it occurred to me that you (and other True readers) may want to turn waste into bounty in regards to hotel "mini-soap".

The U.S. Army typically runs out of soap in Afghanistan and Iraq. When my daughter Olivia was in Afghanistan, I sent her boxes full of hotel soap that I and co-workers had collected in our travels. The soldiers loved it! They could tuck a small bar in one of their pockets when going on missions or just have it available in the latrines.

Readers who don't know anyone who is deployed can always contact a local chapter of Blue Star Mothers. We'll get it where it needs to go!

Blue Star Mothers National Link: http://www.bluestarmothers.org

I just think that perhaps there is another side to this story. For example, incompetent staff that are just too lazy to follow instructions! Or the excuse "Well, no one told me." or, "It's not my job." because initiative doesn't get a bonus.

I just want to say that using the "Do Not Disturb" sign has benefits other than keeping the hotel green - from what I've read about working as a hotel maid, one less room to clean is probably a blessing for the day. I used this recently when staying at a hotel, and it prevented a lot of waste. We were only there for 2 nights, so the room didn't get all that dirty. So, if you don't really need the room cleaned, why not use your Do Not Disturb sign? You'll prevent a lot of waste for sure, and you're also doing the maid a favor.