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Greenwashing works because it feels good and costs you nothing to believe.
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Supply vs. Demand 🌿
Booking a hotel with a green leaf sticker or an "eco-friendly" label from the booking site might lead you to believe your choice is truly environmentally friendly. I hate to break it to you, but most of the time you're not helping the planet.
That feeling of reassurance is precisely what the industry is aiming for, but it's far from reflecting the true environmental impact you're paying for.
This is no small problem. Recent studies already show that travelers question the eco-friendly claims of accommodations. At the same time, another study found that 6 out of 10 guests doubt that hotels are truly environmentally responsible.
The gap between travelers' demand for genuinely sustainable accommodations and the supply from hotels is precisely the path hotels exploit to engage in greenwashing.
Photo by Kelsey Curtis on Unsplash
I'll show you the 7 most common practices hotels use to appear greener, without actually being so.
Each one is backed by verified information and recent studies. For each of the 7 false practices, I'll show you a real one. Something that reduces water consumption, saves energy, avoids plastics, or reduces waste generation.
Reading this before you start planning your next trip will change the way you choose accommodation.
The Water, Sheets, and Towel Show 🛎️
Reusing towels has become a symbol of "eco-friendliness" in hotels. So much so that it's still the only sustainable practice many accommodations implement.
A study published in 2025 in Nature's Humanities and Social Sciences Communications revealed that placing an informational leaflet on the room door doesn't significantly change guests' water consumption. This is because guests either ignored it or confused it with the towel reminders they already disregarded.
🚫Fake Action: The reuse of towels and sheets presented as the hotel's most environmentally committed action without any other visible strategy.
💡Real Action: Investment in verified infrastructure, low-flow facilities, and gray and rainwater harvesting systems. In the United States, some accommodations are enrolled in the EPA WaterSense program, which has helped save 2.1 billion gallons of water since 2006.
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Bye Bye to Plastic Bottles 🧴
Another popular practice among hotels joining the "eco" trend is replacing single-use plastic toiletries with larger plastic dispensers. This benefits no one and is not a sustainable action. Instead of discarding several single-use plastic containers, they discard one larger one.
Although single-use plastics are gradually disappearing, there is still much work to be done.
Photo by Curology on Unsplash
🚫Fake Action: Larger, single-use plastic dispensers marketed as "eco-friendly" and offering small samples to guests upon request.
💡Real Action: Refillable and durable dispensers, solid and/or water-soluble products without plastic packaging. These changes prevent plastic bottles (of any size) from ending up in landfills.
Labels, Colors, and Leaf Logos 🌱
The greatest achievement of greenwashing is the effort each hotel has put into rebranding itself. The color palette is dominated by shades of green, plants are everywhere, and vague language is used to create a fairytale-like atmosphere. Claims like "we are eco-friendly" or perhaps "zero waste" are the most common and the most misleading for guests.
Many of these claims lack any certification to back them up. This places these self-proclaimed "sustainable" accommodations squarely in the category of "greenwashing experts."
🚫Fake Action: Eco-labels created by hotels themselves without any supporting verification or certification. Claims of "carbon neutrality" without a published document or inventory demonstrating their emissions.
💡Real Actions: Current possession of recognized certifications: GSTC, Green Key, EarthCheck, LEED, Travelife. A verifiable carbon document or statement approved by an independent body that has verified the offsets.
Abundance and Energy Theater 🥞
Two things that go unnoticed—until now—but share the same strategy: a small, visible gesture that masks a much larger footprint.
Food waste.
Signs that say "turn off the lights."
The hotel industry generates approximately 79,000 tons of food waste per year (in the United States alone). This is almost 10% of all food waste in the commercial sector.
As a strategy to project abundance, hotels offer buffets with fresh food every day; this is where the industry's biggest waste originates. Instead, they could simply estimate actual demand.
The same is true for access cards that say "turn off the lights." These lead you to believe that the hotel is environmentally responsible and conserves electricity. However, their power plants and energy supply lack truly sustainable practices. In other words, the paths that truly generate change remain invisible to the hotels.
Photo by Swipe 👋😍 on Unsplash
🚫Fake Action: Buffets overflowing with fresh, daily-made food, presented as sustainable and organic. Small reminders about your energy consumption as a guest, presented as an eco-friendly initiative.
💡Real Action: Food waste tracking systems, on-site composting or biodigesters, and donation agreements with food banks. Infrastructure and investment in electricity generation systems that are compatible with verified sustainability practices.
Before You Book Again ✨
Greenwashing works because it feels good and costs you nothing to believe. The next time a hotel shows you a green badge, ask where it came from. If the answer is "the hotel itself," you already have your answer too.
See you next time,
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