The Parson Family has been dedicated to being socially responsible for Granlibakken’s environmental impact in the Tahoe Basin since the family purchased the resort in 1978. Today, green business practices are an integral part of the daily operations of the 74 acre resort located in Tahoe City on the West shore of Lake Tahoe.
Over the years Granlibakken is proud to have hosted hundreds of environmental conferences for groups that continue to stay at the resort and conference center year after year because of the progressive green policies and practices that have been enacted.
On September 5th, 2019 Granlibakken was recognized by Sierra Business Council as the first business in Tahoe to be certified Green. Granlibakken is now a member of the greater California Green Business Network alongside thousands of participating green businesses in California. The Green business certification required completing an extensive checklist evaluating Granlibakken’s energy, solid waste, transportation, wastewater, water, transportation and community policies. Multiple departments worked together to complete the process forming a ‘Green Team’ that now meets monthly.
“Granlibakken completed the certification process much faster than we had expected any of our businesses would. We encourage any business in Tahoe to contact us at Sierra Business Council to get the certification process started” – Benjamin Maritato, Planning Technician at Sierra Business Council
Recently, it was announced by Gov. Newsom that The State of California would ban small single use plastic bottles in all hotels by December 2023. In the summer of 2019 Granlibakken completed the process of switching all soap and lotion plastic bottles into refillable glass bottles and all our bathrooms now feature large refillable bottles for shampoo, conditioner and body wash.
Granlibakken has also committed to reducing single use plastic products in all aspects of daily operations. Our resort and conference center serves over 500,000 cups of coffee a year to our hotel and conference guests. The green-libakken guest experience begins by offering reusable coffee cups at all coffee stations in dining areas. This “small” change has lead to the dramatic reduction of the number of single use coffee cups that need to be purchased for guests throughout the year and saving the company thousands of dollars a year in supplies.
Granlibakken has also added a new water bottle refill station in the hotel lobby through a grant provided by The Tahoe Fund encouraging the use of local Tahoe tap water to guests upon arriving instead of buying a case of single use water bottles from Savemart or Safeway in Tahoe City.
“I believe Tahoe City and Truckee have the potential to become the greenest zip codes in the country. People choose to vacation in Tahoe because of the endless amount of outdoor recreations available, clean air and clean water. I believe that we should do all we can to preserve Tahoe for future generations to enjoy. We try to educate our guests on how they can be more environmentally responsible through the example we set at Granlibakken the moment they arrive.” – Ron Parson, Owner Granlibakken Management Company
Granlibakken is looking forward to hosting a Green Business conference in the Spring of 2020 in partnership with Sierra Business Council to share and educate the local hotel industry about the green business practices which is ingrained in each department from our kitchen’s green purchasing plan, to our maintenance team’s forest & water management program to the cleaning products used in each room.
Granlibakken would like to encourage all Tahoe businesses to begin the green certification process by visiting https://greenbusinessca.org/sierrabusinesscouncil
Granlibakken’s Green Business Report
ENVIRONMENTAL BENEFITS
These environmental benefits are calculated from certain quantitative measures that Granlibakken completed when filling out the checklist. The column titled Per Year savings show the environmental outcomes each year that the measures are implemented and the column titled Since Recognition shows the total environmental outcomes since your recognition on Sept 5, 2019.
