About epicureanjo

Every­body now-a-days has met their fare share of hip­pie, altru­is­tic, tree-hugging, eco-friendly peo­ple. They boast about being all about mother nature and sav­ing the planet, while most of them just want to smoke mother nature and enjoy the peace and quite of no one both­er­ing them about their mean­ing­less exis­tence in life.

On another extreme, there are those who have a mul­ti­tude of great ideas on how to save the planet, by plant­ing gar­dens, bring­ing in new species to pop­u­late dif­fer­ent areas and/or intro­duc­ing new ways of exis­tence for cur­rent pop­u­la­tions. Tho, with all good inten­tions, these peo­ple have no sci­en­tific back­ground in ecol­ogy and don’t real­ize the dis­rup­tion that most of this will cause. Those, with the sci­en­tific back­ground to com­pletely under­stand and those get­ting paid to research. To actu­ally under­stand there are those get­ting paid top dol­lar to research, wait for it, not how to resolve the prob­lem, but how human kind can con­tinue deplet­ing mother nature at the same pace and have it not halt our pro­duc­tion lev­els or com­fort. Instead of dis­con­tin­u­ing fish­ing for a year or so to let mother nature recoup ( we all need time to recoup) sci­en­tists are just look­ing for ways for our destruc­tion to go more ‘unnoticed’.

Nonethe­less, after a plethora of years of these peo­ple preach­ing and sci­en­tists real­iz­ing that the earth will lit­er­ally self destruct if noth­ing is done, it has now become a fad for peo­ple and busi­nesses to “go green”. Using reusable bags for shop­ping, elec­tric cars, solar pan­els, and more; the gen­eral pub­lic is on the move to live a ‘greener’ exis­tence. With this new mind set peo­ple are also turn­ing their focus to eco friendly busi­nesses; shop­ping from local stores and retail­ers, using busi­ness with Green Seal Approval and stay­ing at hotels and resorts using green practices.

Many cor­po­ra­tion have these ini­tia­tives and have groups at each of their loca­tions focus­ing on dif­fer­ent punch items that can be done and dif­fer­ent ways of bring aware­ness to their staff. Hyatt Earth is the cor­po­rate ini­tia­tive that Hyatt Hotels have in place. At Hyatt Regency Scotts­dale their Green team is fast at work plan­ning their Earth Day Cel­e­bra­tion. The Over­all fes­tiv­i­ties will begin on March 29th 2012. A memo will be sent out encour­ag­ing peo­ple to bring in their plas­tic bags for reusable ones and com­mit to only using reusable bags for shop­ping. Reusable cof­fee and water cups will be handed out for those will­ing to com­mit to stop using dis­pos­able cups. An addi­tional draw­ing for car­pool­ers will be held at the Entrance Aware­ness Cel­e­bra­tion on April 20th 2012.

Even more excit­ing is the Green team will also be announc­ing their 2nd Annual Garbage Art con­test. Direc­tor of pur­chas­ing Philippe Brenot encour­ages employ­ees by stat­ing “ I’m sure all of you have recy­clable items at home that would trans­fer won­der­fully into a piece of art, sculp­ture or use­ful items. Well, here is your chance to dis­play your cre­ativ­ity, cute­ness, and good use of recy­clable items.” Employ­ees can sub­mit art­work on their own or as a group by the end of the day on April 19th. This art­work will then be dis­played in the lobby of the resort so that employ­ees and guests alike can vote on their favorite one. This event went over so well last Earth Day that HRS’s Green Team new the staff would be excited to see it again, and hope­fully start a new annual contest.

Hyatt Regency Scottsdale’s green efforts do not stop here how­ever. Not only were they the first and largest resort to install solar pan­els to heat their entire water sup­ply, but they are cur­rently look­ing at pair­ing with Global Green Inte­gra­tors and Ver­misoks Vir­tu­ous Cycle. By part­ner­ing with these two com­pa­nies HRS will be putting 100% effort into the No Land­fill Efforts. GGI will help ana­lyze food scrap amounts and fluc­tu­a­tions, they will then take these food scraps and pass them along into the vir­tu­ous cycle or turn­ing the scraps onto worm wine, which will then grown a gar­den where the pro­duce can then be used at the resort. If played cor­rectly this vir­tu­ous cycle not only helps reduce the amount in land­fills, but will also gen­er­ate a profit for the hotel every 6 months.

Chef Jes­sica Obie

epi­curean jo