Earth Day special with Michael Pace: Creating "EarthCare"

Today is Earth Day, and I’m excited to bring you a special episode on sustainability.

Last week the MICHELIN Guide had a feature article on how San Francisco leads the way in sustainability, so I wanted to speak with Michael Pace - a hotel general manager who has been a pioneer of much of that across multiple hotels and brands here in this city.

Michael is now the General Manager of the InterContinental Mark Hopkins, but today shares the story of how he co-created the "EarthCare" initiative at Kimpton Hotels earlier in his career - which quickly became one of the leading environmental programs in the hospitality industry.

Today's 11-minute episode covers:

• The unexpected way EarthCare got started (0:53)

• Being a part of the solution (2:07)

• Starting with one floor of a hotel (3:06)

• The working group (4:14)

• Advice on scaling an initiative (4:50)

• Creating a vision and mission (5:14)

• What doesn’t work (6:00)

• Getting buy-in (6:31)

• Creating custom trash cans (7:31)

• Making the business case to owners (8:11)

Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or the website.