At Goldminer’s Daughter Lodge our livelihood is directly related to the environment. We welcome the “Greatest Snow on Earth” each and every season, but we also take responsibility for our actions as stewards of this beautiful canyon. Running a hotel in an alpine environment consists of many, many moving parts. We always ask ourselves what can we do to reduce our footprint.
For the upcoming season, Goldminer’s Daughter Lodge has made the decision to no longer sell bottled water at the Lodge. We will be installing a filtered ezH2O bottle filling station, and we will have reusable water bottles for sale at the Slopeside Café.
While working through the pros and cons of banning the sale of bottled water at the lodge, we did a little research and found several organizations founded with the primary goal of informing and educating on the bottled water industry not only in the US but also across the world.
Ban the Bottle tells us that within the US, the average person uses 167 bottles of water annually. We spend $11.8 billion on bottled water each year, which equals about 30 billion bottles. From The Water Project, we learned more about how the greater bottled water industry impacts the shortage of water many suffer from daily. The statistics available are wide and far reaching. We at Goldminer’s Daughter Lodge are following in the footsteps of many before us who had decided that a small change in our habits and perceived conveniences might have a larger impact on the greater good.
While the decision to ban the sale of bottled water at the Lodge is the biggest, a few additional ways we reduce our footprint include:
- Using biodegradable plastic ware in the Café
- Recycling glass, plastic, and paper products throughout the lodge
- Using recycled paper products
- Using recycled materials in Lodge amenity packaging
- Encouraging guests to reuse towels and sheets during their stay
- Adding reusable glasses to Lodge guest rooms in the East Wing. We plan to add additional reusable glasses for the upcoming season
- Replacing the majority of light bulbs are LED
We continue to explore additional ways we can reduce our impact on the environment. The Lodge is a proud member of the Green Hotels Association, which helps us to identify environmentally friendly opportunities.
How can you lower your environmental footprint during your next visit to the Lodge?
- Bring or purchase a reusable water bottle
- Reuse towels and sheets
- Skip the car and take a shuttle from the airport
- Incorporate environmentally friendly practices into your daily life
There is always more work to do, but we are proud of the commitments we have made to this point.