Viva Las Vegas

I’m finally doing the first overnight business trip to Las Vegas, hopefully a little more eco-friendly than if I had done it a year ago. Not sure what I’ll find, but I am hopeful about many of the restaurants and stores I’ve found on happycow.net. I will coming here for the next 3 weeks (anyone want to join me?), so I hope by the end of the trip I’ve found good solutions. But then, who has the luxury of time in most situations? Not me.

My hotel is certainly not at the top of the list of environmentally friendly lodgings, but it is on the list. It’s the MGM Grand and as I looked at the criteria for it being awarded 2 green trees (out of 5) I noticed it was only slightly better than most business class hotels I’m used to – different only in that they educate staff to being green and having fresh air available. I can’t really say what they are training their staff to do, but they do have a flyer that tells guests what they’re up to- washing sheets and towels every 3 days, using organics in their restaurants, recycling, conserving energy with motion sensors. I’ve also noticed excessive use of mirrors near the lights which does lighten the room a lot for the few lights in it. However, walk downstairs into the casino or the clubs and you see money and energy being pumped into the atmosphere with amazing speed!
From a business perspective, the room sucks. I’m moving after a day just because I can’t work in this room, it’s uncomfortable and dark. Maybe it’d be ok if I were playing all night and sleeping all day, but I have work to do it’s just not conducive to that.
I’m not moving to another hotel on the list, not this week anyway. Although some of the new casinos and resorts have done a great job at green construction they are priced way out of my business budget, so I’ll need to investigate these a little more for the next two weeks. And for what it’s worth, I don’t have access to fresh air in my room, what are they talking about?

I’m relatively happy with my airline as well. I know that there is no good air travel, so I have to settle for the lesser of the evils. My research for domestic travel shows Southwest Airlines, Virgin America and Alaska Air at the top of the green-friendly list.
Southwest has slowed down planes by 1-3 minutes a route- which is more fuel efficient, and are also working on lowering the per-person weight of on-board supplies by 5 pounds, which will result in less fuel per trip. They also unveiled a “green plane” lately that has recycled carpet that can then be recycled again once it’s worn out. My biggest issue with Southwest is that I can’t take direct flights many places, which is a priority with me. That and assigned seats, I like to know I’m not sitting bitch all the way to my destination.
Virgin America with its newer fleet makes it more fuel efficient to start with, but they also employ more fuel saving techniques such as single-engine taxing and regulating cruise speed. Rumors are they are also looking into biofuels.
Alaska has recycle programs in place and uses soy-based ink in its magazines. As a corporation they do a lot of philanthropic work and encourage employees to do the same. I love Alaska, even if they’re never on-time. But then, I fly them enough that they treat me really well so I may be a little baised.

Worst on the list? United and US Air. That doesn’t surprise me, at least not United, I’ve written before about how bad they’ve been to employees. I think they also have the least amount of legroom in coach class. Legroom is bad that if the person in front of you puts their seat back, you better hope you didn’t have your computer open and on the tray because it just got smashed. There is no working on United Air, there just is no room to do anything.

So I have a silly question, maybe someone out there can answer it? While reading about Southwest’s efforts to lower per person weight I began to wonder about food and drink. So here is my question. If there is 10,000 pounds of people weight when the plane takes off, and there is 2000 pounds of food and drink. If the people eat all the food and drink, what will the collective weight then be? Does it all stay the same? Obviously you have a fixed environment when the plane takes off and when it lands, I would assume no weight would be lost or gained, but I may be wrong? Anyone out there want to tackle this?

So next week I try to find a hybrid car. I had to take an Impala this week, I figured it was the most fuel efficient than the SUV or minvan.

Seriously though, anyone want to join me in Vegas?