HOUSTON — In an effort to further reduce its carbon footprint, Hilton Americas-Houston, the city’s largest hotel and first Green Seal-certified hotel in Texas, is now even greener following the installation of an AquaRecycle water-recycling system in its on-premise laundry.
The laundry facility, covering 27,000 square feet and rivaling many commercial laundry plants in both size and capacity, is by far the largest hotel laundry in the city, washing and finishing more than 675,000 pounds of linens per month, Hilton Americas-Houston says. Its two Lavatec tunnel washers have a maximum working capacity of 5,550 pounds of linen per hour.
With the recycling system installed, Hilton Americas-Houston’s water usage of 630,000 gallons per month will be reduced by 75%, conserving more than 5.5 million gallons of drinking water per year and keeping the same amount of wastewater and associated toxins from entering the environment through the local wastewater treatment plants, the hotel says.
Water returned to the washers through the AquaRecycle system maintains its temperature at 120 F, achieving significant energy savings by eliminating the need to heat cold water to required wash temperatures. These savings are reflected not only monetarily in lower natural gas bills, but also environmentally by preventing more than 260 metric tons of greenhouse gases in the form of CO2 from entering the atmosphere.
Hilton Americas-Houston’s high-volume laundry facility processes 9 million pounds per year. In addition to handling the laundry requirements for the 1,200-guestroom downtown convention hotel, the on-site laundry also contracts to handle all laundry needs of the George R. Brown Convention Center plus seven additional area hotels.
By utilizing the AquaRecycle system, the hotel has reduced not only its own carbon footprint, but also that of others as it continues its ongoing dedication to environmental stewardship.
Directly connected to the George R. Brown Convention Center, Hilton Americas-Houston contains the city’s largest number of guestrooms, ballrooms, and hotel meeting space.American Laundry News featured the hotel in an October 2008 story (Hilton Americas-Houston laundry keeps coming up big) about its continued service after Hurricane Ike, which had just caused billions of dollars in damage to the upper Gulf Coast of Texas.
Have a question or comment? E-mail our editor Matt Poe at [email protected].