A Renaissance in the Green

Let’s face it. American cities have something of a national flair for generating waste, and Music City, unfortunately, is no exception. For example, just last year, a study commissioned by the Metro Nashville Public Works found that nearly 75% of all the trash produced by area corporations could have been reused, repurposed or recycled before ever reaching the landfill. And, speaking of landfills, did you know that Middle Point, a Rutherford County landfill that services Nashville, will reach maximum capacity in the next six to seven years? Good grief, that’s just one dog year from now.

 

Fortunately, there are lots of smart people doing great things to make modern life more sustainable for all of us. Here in town, Urban Green Labs leads a Corporate Sustainability Roundtable, an initiative that brings corporations together to share best practices and to inspire fresh ideas. The 6th and final meeting of 2018 took place recently at the Renaissance Hotel, a downtown institution and the original convention center hotel for more than thirty years and now a leader in conserving energy and water.

 

Because they are a 600+ room hotel, small improvements add up to huge savings in energy and resources. By 2025--using 2016 as a baseline--the Renaissance aims to reduce its utilities by 20%, an ambitious yet achievable goal. Guests can opt into the “Make a Green Choice” program where they can put their towels on hooks to reuse and have the linens changed every three days instead of daily. This vastly reduces the amount of energy and water.

 

But the Renaissance has gone high tech, too. The hotel has installed aerators in all the showerheads, reducing water flow. In the two years the efficient showerheads have been in place, there has been a grand total of one complaint. The hotel has also installed an AquaRecycle, a closed loop laundry wash water recycling system that reduces incoming water usage by 80% and cuts energy costs to heat water by almost half. At a cost of some $200,000, the Renaissance expects the AquaRecycle to pay for itself within three years while saving 4 to 6 million gallons of water annually. 

 

There are other sustainable highlights as well. Since April, the food and beverage team has saved some 10,000 pounds of cooking oil from going into a landfill by recycling it. Little Fib, the Renaissance Hotel’s new restaurant--psst, try the hush puppy crab cakes--uses paper straws for the cocktails and hyper locally sourced honey--from the Renaissance’s own beehives!--tomake a honey blonde ale in partnership with Tailgate Brewery, that flows from the Little Fib’s taps. For food in the kitchen that never makes it to a customer’s plate, it now winds up at a local rescue mission, helping those in need while sparing Nashville’s landfills from the easily avoidable and completely unnecessary curse of food waste. For food that does come back from the table, it now winds up in its proper composting bin, some of it going to external uses and some of it going toward the Renaissance Hotel’s own organic garden, Beetopia, an urban oasis built from rebuilt and upcycled materials and providing fresh herbs and vegetables as well as some five hundred pounds of honey annually.