0 Green Hotels - The Good

We went away on a long weekend trip to Ottawa recently and stayed at the Minto Suites.  I went into this trip expecting to be wow'd by our hotel choice based on the environmental ratings it had received. I was excited to see the cool things that our room would have. I think any hotel that promotes itself as a green hotel should have offerings that are above and beyond what you would expect to see in a typical hotel. I want to see things that I haven't seen before. So here is the 'Good' of what we got at a 4 Key and 4 Leaf hotel.

The Good

There was a dual flush toilet in the bathroom, which allows you to select the amount of water that will be used when you flush. Now only the one bathroom had this kind of toilet, the other was a low flow toilet. I am not entirely sure why there would be two different types of toilets in the same hotel room but regardless it is the first hotel that I have stayed at that has this option.

The only shampoo, conditioner and body wash available in "bulk" on the shower wall. I liked this because it reduces the amount of packaging in those tiny bottles and it also reduces excess waste from them replacing those bottles every.single.day once you open one of them.

There was in room recycling. I find that this is probably the second most common "green" program that hotels offer. The most common is the towel usage program. You know the one where they have that little card in the bathroom that explains their commitment to the environment and how if you leave a towel in the sink or tub that it means you want it washed and replaced but if you hang it back up then you want to reuse it. This hotel has that program as well and they actually followed it.

All the keys were reusable. They were not the cards that you typically find in a hotel. Instead they looked like old keys that were actually electronic. At the end of the stay we simply returned them and then they can reprogram and reuse them. The same for the keys for the parking garage.

There is a bike rental program for adults and kids. We didn't use this because B is too young but I love this idea in a city that is very bike friendly. When we are back in the city when B is older we will completely take advantage of this program!

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