• The Washington Post, Tuesday, April 8, 2008 12:45 PM

Marriott International is pledging $2 million to protect 1.4 million acres of endangered rain forest in the Brazilian state of Amazonas, will reduce fuel and water consumption at its 3,000 hotels, and will furnish its rooms with Bic pens made from pre-consumer recycled plastic. Marriott is also updating design guidelines for its hotels to meet the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED standards, and is pressuring its suppliers to provide greener products. And next month it plans to introduce a green meetings concept that will feature recycled paper and responsible packaged water.

The firm's new greening tactics--detailed in Washington, D.C. yesterday among singing birds at the National Zoo's Amazonia rain forest exhibit--come as the hotel industry is seeing the kind of demand for environmentally sound products that is already being felt by companies ranging from Wal-Mart to Alcoa. But it's not entirely altruistic.

Besides meeting customer demand for more environmentally conscious hotel stays and corporate meetings, CEO J.W. Marriott Jr. says he is worried that climate change poses a serious threat. "We've got a lot of beachfront hotels," he says. "We don't want two feet of water in the lobbies."

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