The Green Hotels Association® are expecting imaginative environmental changes and improvements and 3 important green changes that we are expecting in coming years.

First, we truly believe that food waste will become a commodity—a valuable commodity.  Commercial decomposition will be the motivator.  Companies now offering decomposition equipment include biohitech.com, bio-ez.com, somatcompany.com and greenkey.tv.  

Their stainless steel equipment can handle hundreds of pounds of food waste a day.  As restaurants and food processing companies produce food waste, it can be put into a machine where the combination of water, heat, agitation and micro-organisms dissolves the food waste into a watery slurry in 4 to 24 hours. 

As the food dissolves, it is released into the sanitary sewer line.  Municipal sewer management is said to love the process because microbes are also released into the sewer where they help keep the sewer lines clean.

This decomposing equipment was developed in Korea where the slurry is spread over farms and vineyards as organic fertilizer.  The "food waste" is very valuable as organic fertilizer, but it could also become livestock feed, pet food as well as other products.  Hotels and all restaurants will soon see the food-waste slurry sold to companies whose truckers will haul it to farms, vineyards and manufacturing plants.  So, in the future food waste will be sold. 

Commercial decomposition also negates the need for large, smelly dumpsters at hotel docks.  It removes most of the reasons mice, rats, roaches and other vermin occupy those docks and dumpsters.  It should also cancel the need for odor-control equipment as well as the use of pesticides in kitchens and at docks.

Secondly, we at "Green" Hotels Association® believe that plumbing manufacturers will redesign kitchen and bath fixtures so that they have clicks just as vehicle windshield wipers do.  The clicks will allow an easier choice of a lot or a little water.  One will know, by touch, the volume of water being chosen.  Plumbing manufacturers have made faucets so easy to turn on full blast that it is somewhat difficult to get a small stream of water. 

Aerators, which introduce air into a faucet's water stream, are now available from manufacturers at 0.5, 1.0, 1.5 etc. gallons per minute.  However, that choice is not currently available on new fixtures we purchase.  Most new plumbing equipment generally includes a 2.5 gpm aerator.

Patricia Griffin, GHA President and Founder, says "Plumbing manufacturers need to make these conservation changes.  Bath and kitchen sink faucets must allow us to precisely choose the volume of water provided.  We must be given a choice of aerators with lower flow rates on new fixtures."  Fresh water is obviously one of our most valuable resources and will continue to become more and more valuable, so we must improve conservation opportunities.

GHA's third prediction involves parking buildings, office buildings and street lights that are all lit all night long every night even though no one is nearby.  All lighting in parking and office buildings will be converted to lighting that is accompanied with motion and/or heat sensors that will turn those lights on only when they detect motion or body heat.  (A timer would keep the lights on during working hours.) 

At night when motion or body heat is detected, the lights will come on and stay on for a predetermined period of time.  Once the motion or body heat is no longer detected, the lights will turn off—perhaps after another 15 seconds.  Yes, of course, one out of 10 or so lights can stay on as security lights.  Billions of street lights that are lit all night long every night should also incorporate the sensors. 

Reduced energy use, of course, means less air pollution because less coal is being burned to produce electricity.

Conservation by each of us is critical to protecting the world's resources and life itself.