[Ed: This is a speech Barbara gave last year, and I thought it appropriate as a special Thursday post!]

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Good Morning, my name is Barbara Pressman, the proud General Manager of the only green hotel in Palo Alto that is certified by the county. What a great marketing tool this has been for the Stanford Terrace Inn. Additionally we are recognized in “Greenopia” the urban dwellers guide to green living” [Ed Note: STI donates to charities, supports local businesses, green groups, and we could go on.  Frankly this isn't done *for* marketing, it is a byproduct.  This is done, quite simply, because this is who Barbara is.]

“SHOW ME THE MONEY” This comes from one of my favorite movies Jerry McGuire. ” There is a lot to learn from that movie. Mostly you have to give, do the work, have some faith in yourself and then if you’re lucky the money will follow. That has been my experience with going “Green”

Most of us need a reason that resounds within us to be motivated to a cause.

Being “Green” is a very loose term - what does it mean for ones business, ones home and ones choices? How or where do you start to become green? When I look at the global impact of what we are doing to the world by our indiscriminate decisions, it overwhelms me and brings me to a standstill. I need to keep bringing it home and then expand outside of myself one step at a time.

Being green is something I grew up with. It wasn’t called that then. And it wasn’t something that I always embraced. I grew up in Canada; my parents emigrated there from Germany in 1954. They grew up in a time of war and for them; practicing “green” was just a way of life, when there was not very much of anything. As a kid this way for living had nothing to do with “saving the world” but everything to do with saving money.

They taught me to reuse, reduce, and recycle, and zero waste was their goal, but these were not the buzz words that they used. It was all about the money. They did not have much, putting everything they had into owning a home and maintaining a decent lifestyle. Waste was not something they could bring themselves to do as a result of their experiences in Europe. So we used the paper grocery bags as trash can liners, the glass jars were washed and used for storage or for canning, we composted to have fertilizer for the garden, traded clothes with other families once we outgrew ours, we separated our paper from our other garbage, and carefully unwrapped our gifts so that the wrapping could be used again. The saving of water was my mother’s forte. I am not sure, but water must have been like gold in Germany because what my mother could clean and grow with one pail of water was amazing. Putting our washed clothes on a line to dry, come on mom how about a clothes dryer. . . As a young person all this embarrassed me. I did not see my friends living in the same way, so in my mind we were poor, so I added a forth “R” to the others “Reject”. I rejected all of these ideas and went out of my way not to recycle, for those were the “golden” years. There was plenty and there would always be plenty.

I re-embraced my parent’s ideals when I had my own kids; this was my motivator, the impetus for the cause. It was now my responsibility to do my part in keeping the world safe, for them.

I have been at the Stanford Terrace Inn for 16 years. Part of my job is to find ways to make more money. In the hotel business there are three ways to do this, charge more, sell more, or reduce expenses. This is where I started 13 years ago. Waste removal is a huge expense for a hotel; my goal was to reduce that cost by half, which I did. My husband told me a story, when he worked for the Sheraton Palace in 1987, as the executive steward one of his responsibilities to make sure there was enough china, silver and glassware for all the functions. There was a lot that went missing. He convinced the GM to let him hire what he called a garbage raker; someone who went through the garbage to look for hotel items. Not only did this position end up paying for itself but actually saved the hotel money. I just recently read an article where the Chicago Hyatt recovers 3 to 10 thousand dollars per month in hotel property in what they call a recycling program by going through the garbage. This reduced there waste by 80%.

At the Stanford Terrace we have tried many things, some have worked and others we discarded.

Being green started to mean more than just reducing our garbage. It became a concern about our room cleaners and the chemicals they used, so we are now using products that are non toxic. This stemmed from a Green program that we started in a portion of our rooms, for which there is an up charge making more money. These rooms have air and water filtration for those with sensitivities to the environment. We use compact fluorescent bulbs and low flow showerheads, as well as low flush toilets. We provide a local shuttle to transport several guests at one time to similar locations, reducing emissions. We use a Green Dry Cleaner (no percs’) “Tetra-chloro-ethene” And the only place we use chlorine in the hotel is in the pool, chlorine is a very aggressive chemical, and I am sure an entire meeting could be used to discuss its’ detrimental effects.  Also our amenities have environmentally sensitive formulas.

A good friend reminded me about a song Kermit sings “it ain’t easy bein green” I think the intention was to speak on diversity, but I’d like to end with two of those verses:

It’s not easy being green

It seems you blend in with so many other ordinary things

And people seem to pass you over ‘cause you’re

Not standing out like flashy sparkles in the water

Or stars in the sky

When green is all there is to be

It could make you wonder why

But why wonder, why wonder?

I’m green and it’ll do fine

It’s beautiful!

And I think it’s what I want to be.

Seems that Kermit had more than one message to send. It may not be easy, but it is the right thing to do.

Thank you and I urge you to do your part, even it is just one step at a time.