SERA, others take on green purchasing for hotels

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The Hospitality Sustainable Purchasing Consortium will work on making hotel rooms greener.

SERA Architects has teamed with nine partners, including Marriott International Inc., to form an industry consortium bent on making hotel purchasing more sustainable.

The Hospitality Sustainable Purchasing Consortium will take on sustainability concerns in the hotel industry supply chain, tackling everything from toxic ingredients in products to the social impact of hotels in their communities.

The effort is being led by MindClick SGM, a sustainable business consulting firm.

The décor of an average hotel room turns over every five to seven years. And despite the fact that many new hotels are being built to green building standards, the furnishings of the interior of the hotel aren't given the same scrutiny. Hotels spend more than $1 billion a year on furniture, fixtures and equipment.

"The building can be LEED but the furniture, fixtures and equipment, as it's called in the industry, is very rarely looked at," said Lisa Zangerle, director of interior design for SERA and the point person at the Portland-based architecture firm for the new consortium. "People who stay in the rooms are touching, sleeping on and breathing what could be some toxic element."

Zangerle said SERA, which is known for its work on the planned Oregon Sustainability Center, has been working on the issue with some recent renovations of interiors for Marriott in Portland and Denver. But finding recyclable and harmful ingredient-free materials for the rooms proved challenging.

The consortium will help address this problem by amplifying the demand for green products and Zangerle expects the suppliers will be ready to listen.

"I think they're going to be very receptive to this," she said. "They understand that this is where the market is heading."

The consortium's first order of business, in addition to recruiting more members to its ranks, is to develop a questionnaire for suppliers that will gather information about green attributes of different items from wall coverings to bathroom fixtures. The group will then choose a hotel remodel to use as a case study for green purchasing.

“Marriott has a more than 20-year commitment to environmental sustainability,” said Dave Lippert, Marriott vice president of architecture and construction procurement, in a statement. “Our membership in this consortium will help us meet our aggressive goals to continue to reduce our global footprint.”

Other founding members of the consortium include Audit Logistics, Benjamin West, Delta Faucet Company, Innvision, InterfaceFLOR, PE International Inc., architecture firm RTKL and Valley Forge Fabrics.

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