If you’ve stayed at a hotel recently, you may have discovered that they have started putting these little cards in your room about how much water and energy is spent on cleaning hotel room linens and they encourage you to reuse your bedding and towels. Well the hotel I stayed at last week had some of these cards. As much as I think that this is a good idea, seeing as I don’t personally feel the need to change my sheets or towels when I’m at home once a day (though I know people that do), there was a major flaw in their system. Here’s the problem: this (up-scale) hotel had absolutely no place to easily hang a towel to dry. There was a tiny rack above the sink that was holding a number of folded towels, which meant that there wasn’t enough space to spread them out to dry. There was no (real) hanging space on the back of the door, and the shower rod was inaccessible to shorter people (in fact the bathroom looked like it was designed for college basketball players). I can see how it could have worked if there was only one person in the room, but since there were two of us, it was impractical. So my suggestion would be, if you’re going to encourage people to conserve, make sure that there is a feasible way for them to do so. There are some of us who would like to help, but aren’t willing to go so far as reusing damp hotel towels.

Have you ever experienced this or other impractical conservation attempts?