Last year, I had the opportunity to work with the Governor’s Energy Office, particularly with The Colorado Carbon Fund, a great organization helping communities offset carbon with local projects – things that we can all see and touch.

Communication is the key to almost everything we do successfully and with the help of the Carbon Fund folks we put our heads together and came up with a successful program for our hotel. That’s what it was all about, the sharing of information.

Talking about sustainability, that’s what we’re trying to do with our community and with this blog! We all have unique approaches to it and if our hearts are really in the right place we should want others to adopt the programs that work (and avoid the ones that don’t)…even with our competing businesses, which brings me to Andrea & Bert, the owners of the Quality Inn and the Golden Hotel. I shared this story in a group setting a few weeks ago and my local competitors were there. : )

After my story, Andrea asked me a few questions and then decided to start a similar pilot program at the Golden Hotel. Then again just recently, Andrea & Bert made a number of changes at the Quality Inn in Boulder, including the installation of solar panels. These changes will dramatically lower the environmental impact of this hotel. I’ll admit that when I first saw their press release my first reaction was along the lines of: "Man, they are getting ahead of me!" But, as I thought on it for a moment, I realized that we are all in this race together, and their efforts should give me things to think about and recommit myself to, like moving the bar a bit higher in my own operations.

After having been a bit in survival mode during "the Great Recession," this approach was exactly what I needed. We took a couple projects off the back burner, and now will be spending some money upfront this year that will move our own sustainability efforts along. We really are all in this together and while I may sometimes compete with Andrea and Bert for business, in our sustainability competition we can both win by making each other better.