Acadia Cottages

Maine Green Lodging Certification Program - Member

Contact:

Maine Green Lodging Certification Program 28 Tyson Drive Augusta, ME United States 04333 phone: 207-822-6303 email: peter.cooke@maine.gov

Property's Green Team Leader:
      Lisa Wissinger - 207-244-5388

Mailing Address:
      410 Main Street - Mount Desert Island
      Southwest Harbor, ME US

Please note that this is a husband/wife operated business and we do not have employees. That means that some of the items on survey about employee initiatives were not really applicable. We have 11 self-catering cottages, a laundry cottage, and a check-in cottage. So, we don't really have a lot of "public" places where motion detectors and such would make sense. We just ask guests to turn the lights on and off when using these areas.

We have a binder in each cottage that discusses our environmental initiatives (duplicates that which is on our website and has additional info such as the NRDC shopper's guide to paper products and recommended websites for learning more about being environmentally responsible). We have books in our office about environmental issues for guests to borrow. We provide information as to where guests can purchase local, organic products. We purchase as many products locally as possible, but that can be challenging in our location. All of our cleaning supplies are either green seal or Canadian equivalent certified. Our amenities are purchased in 5 gallon containers and placed in refillable bottles. We don't feed guests, but all of our household waste is composted and guests often leave their food scraps for our compost. We recycle all guest bottles, cans, glass, paper, cardboard, etc. All paper products provided are of the highest recycled content available. In fact, I just replaced our tissues and paper towels with Seventh Generation and Green Forest since they now have 90% post consumer content. We are constantly looking at the latest info to see how we can improve what we are doing and to better educate guests. We tried using bamboo sheets and towels, but we found that they do not hold up well. The towels seem to stain more easily. We do not use hot water and use Stain Solver, rather than bleach. The sheets seem to pill after a dozen washings, which is not very practical or environmentally responsible. Guests will assume they are old, so we can't keep using them. I now use them in my own home. We do buy cotton sheets and towels. When they wear out, we donate them to homeless shelters or to SPCA. We encourage guests to use the free Island Explorer Shuttle rather than driving their own cars into Acadia National Park. We are currently doing some reading and speaking with a local source about the possibility of using wind power on our property. We need to take wind readings for feasibility study and also see if we can work this into the budget. Maine currently does not allow individuals to sell power back to the grid, but our legislators are working on it.

We have been certified as an environmental leader in Maine. As we make improvements to the property (we are starting our 3rd season), we try to make further environmental improvements.