Dec 28, 2007
“HEY there’s no schwag!” my wife, Nina, exclaimed from the bathroom of our room at the Gaia Napa Valley Hotel.
The Gaia, which advertises itself as “Napa Valley’s first fully environmentally sustainable hotel,” has eschewed the tiny plastic bottles of lotion, shampoo and conditioner, instead using wall-mounted dispensers. I breathed a sigh of relief that neither the collection in our bathroom at home nor the infamous raft of plastic garbage in the middle of the Pacific, which I imagine to consist largely of hotel amenities, would grow larger from this stay.
The idea of luxury has long been intertwined with — even confused with — profligate waste. But with green consciousness making its way to center stage, some hotels are changing their ways. They face a delicate balance: when does greening go so far as to cut palpably into the feeling of luxury?
