Famous words, minus a profanity, from our friend Shakespeare. And though our most recent eco-update was not because the regular laundry process wasn’t working, the ability for our new process to do even better makes us think of this famous line.

Hotel laundry rooms are rather fascinating in that over 100 beds of linens can get clean in less than a single day. Imagine washing, drying, folding, making, and unmaking your bed 100 times in a day. Now add to that room towels, pool towels and specialty items like gym towels and table clothes. Now do that everyday for six months. Then relax for a bit since it is about half that for the other six in the off season (maybe – we’ve had a few times that surprise us). Phew. It’s rather amazing that in three hours between 11am check out and 2pm check in – every room gets checked and made ready. Almost makes one have to take a break from reading this and take a nap . . .

But back to the blog at hand. As you can imagine, all this washing takes water (hot and cold) and chemicals (we use an eco-friendly detergent) and energy (to run the washers and dryers and heat the water). Bottom line is that the laundry is necessary, but not necessarily eco-friendly.

That’s why our newest eco-update to our Ogunquit hotel is so great. This month we have made the switch to Ozone in our laundry facility. Ozone is a chemical process that cleans the laundry with only cold water – eliminating the hot water, reducing the time the machines fills (it’s less than half – from 4.5 minutes to 1.5 minutes), shortening the wash cycle (45 minutes to 20 minutes) and shortening the dry cycle (something about what happens makes drying go faster – it’s a bit technical, but it works!). Obviously a huge boost to being a better environmental leader! Best part – it cleans the laundry better, brighter and softer (so far so good – though this one may be in the eye of the beholder).

This past June, our laundry facility was part of our World Ocean Day Eco-Tours of the Resort. Be sure to check this area out next World Ocean Day for a behind the scenes look.

Til then – every little bit counts! Keep up the good green work!