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Green hotels for a greener world

The Fairmont Chateau in Whistler puts its money where its mouth is when it comes to being green.

The Canadian chain (53 hotels in 12 countries) leads the world on sustainable practice in the hospitality industry – while providing a top-quality luxury experience too.

Eco-gain without the pain. It teaches the guests. And it really impressed us.

This isn’t greenwash. Sustainability underpins everything the Fairmont chain does – from transport to recycling, community relations and electricity generation to the Natural Step, all held together by the company-wide Environmental Partnership Program.

prone spoke with Lynn Gervais, PR manager at the hotel. “One thing we aim at is being authentically local,” she said. “We’re Whistler. And that’s a great thing.“

Here at prone, we’re also very fond of the TYF eco-hotel in St David’s – the first organic hotel in Wales, located in Britain’s smallest city on some of its wildest, loveliest coast.

From 12-bedroom converted windmill to the largest luxury hotel chain in North America. Now all we need are the ones in between.

Natural step for Whistler

prone went to Whistler in British Columbia, on the western edge of Canada in the Rockies not far from Vancouver, to take a look at how they’re preparing for hosting the 2010 Winter Olympics and Paralympics.

It’s a fantastically beautiful place, with huge mountains, undisturbed virgin forests, lakes, rivers, snow, miles and miles and miles of wilderness…unbelievable.

Canada has exploited its rich natural resources brutally in the past.

But now, Whistler’s showing the way to a different future.

As well as being a ski town and resort, it’s committed to becoming one of the most sustainable communities in North America.

prone spoke to David Udow of Ziptrek Ecotours in Whistler about eco-business and social responsibility.

While walking its customers along treetop platforms prior to launching them into space, Ziptrek tells them about the Natural Step, a sustainability model being adopted by countries, communities and businesses across the world (including, since September 2007, the EU.).

When you adopt the Natural Step, David told us, interesting things happen.

People get happier. Networks are strengthened. Profits rise.

And given that you’re out in the mountains ripping along a steel cable in a harness 200 feet above a glacial river gorge in 33 acres of a 10,000-year-old temperate rainforest paradise when you first hear about it, the environmental message tends to stick.

They take 20,000 visitors a year through this experience.

The ziplines work by gravity, and the A-frame cabin where you drink your hot chocolate at the end of the tour gets its electricity from a small hydroelectric arrangement, barely visible in the mountain stream below.

Sustainable. And unforgettable.

With the eyes of the whole world on the resort in 2010, little Whistler (pop. 10,000) has the chance to get its sustainability message out to the world in a big way.

New year, new home

On 1 January 2008, prone moved some of our operations to the Hub in Bristol.

It’s a good space: in the heart of the city’s old quarter by the docks, flexible, interesting, properly resourced, a buzz that gets you moving and friendly people who get where we’re coming from.

That’s no accident. The Hub is deliberately designed to flow, synergize, run the physical in and out of the virtual space. They say they’re a multi-sited network connecting social innovators who are striving to improve the world around them in new ways. There are Hubs in London, Rotterdam, Sao Paolo, Toronto, Soweto, elsewhere.

Makes sense to us. New ways for new worlds.

The day after we joined, it was shortlisted as one of the six top social entrepreneurs in the UK by the Independent newspaper.

Social enterprises aren’t just charities or campaigns, says the Indy. They “identify opportunities for market creation and in the process change systems and practices that have excluded millions from benefiting from advances in information education technology, health technology, full employment, and the like…[Their] role is also that of a transformational catalyst, spinning off models that can be replicated for wide adoption in many settings.”

Congratulations to Mike, Ceri, and all the other people who have held on over the past 15 months and believed in the vision. It’s a well-deserved accolade.

We’re glad to be there.