At the Siwash Lake Ranch, a luxury dude ranch outside Kamloops, B.C., the environment talk is one of the first orders of business for arriving guests.
"As soon as they get there, they get the routine from us," says Allyson Rogers, the ranch's co-owner, who walks guests through basics such as dealing with trash, recycling and composting. And with the guests onboard (the ranch can host two or three families at a time), Siwash Lake puts out one bag of garbage - every month.
"We're inviting them to share in the way we do things," Rogers says. "They usually get very excited about it."
Siwash Lake is one of the most eco-friendly destinations in Canada, according to a rating system devised by the Hotel Association of Canada. It's a small, conspicuously green operation in the British Columbia foothills near Kamloops, running entirely "off the grid" on solar power and a backup generator.
Of course, luxury lodges have been using all things green as selling points for years.
But a larger move to green the hotel industry is afoot, and it's not limited to self-described eco-tourism operations - upscale or otherwise.
For one thing, there's a new level of attentiveness among guests. Patrons are suddenly worried about nuts and bolts issues such as energy consumption and waste, and with the cost of energy and garbage disposal rising, even national chains are discovering that going green isn't just good public relations, it's good for the bottom line.
Riding this wave, the Hotel Association of Canada is promoting a rapidly growing "Green Key" program that rates hotels on a scale of one to five keys, based on a survey of everything from what they're doing with their wastewater, to how much power they're using.
A complete list of participating hotels and their key ratings can be found at http://www.hacgreenhotels.com.
Still, although guests are increasingly attracted to green properties, concerns about trading off environmentalism for pampering remain.
"The trick is trying to get people notice as little as possible," says Jason Kelly, the general manager of the Monterey Inn, an Ottawa hotel on the banks of the Rideau that has made a name for itself as a planet-friendly destination by minding basics such as waste reduction, water conservation and carbon offsetting. "There seems to be the stigma that if you're trying to get things environmentally friendly, you might be compromising comfort."
Hotels are also trying to reduce the massive amounts of materials that they consume, and subsequently need to dispose of. That means that, given the rising cost of sending waste to landfills, recycling and composting have become de rigueur, even if guests don't notice.
Small things can make a difference. Some establishments are getting rid of individually packaged soaps and shampoos, replacing them with bulk pumps - even if the soap in those pumps is a luxury brand such as Bulgari, like at the Trout Point Lodge, an upscale eco-lodge outside Yarmouth, N.S.
At Ottawa's Monterey Inn, the management hasn't just put recycling bins in every room, but created outdoor recycling stations around the hotel's parking lot to help drivers clean out the inevitable post-road trip clutter from their vehicles without dumping it all in the trash.
And in Toronto, the downtown Hilton and the Royal York reduce waste by donating uneaten meals to the city's Second Harvest food bank. (The Royal York also has a roof garden where they grow herbs used in the hotel's meals.)
Fairmont's Chateau Lake Louise, has been pushing the green agenda for decades. Like many hotels, they started with relatively easy changes such as upgrading their showers and toilets with low-flow fixtures, and changing their lighting to compact fluorescent bulbs (facilitated by the availability of compact fluorescent bulbs in shades other than garish white).
