As an advocate of responsibility, one may find themselves feeling an immense amount of joy from the smallest feats of sustainability success... whether it was bringing a compost program to your business to educating a family member on passive heating and cooling to reduce their energy consumption and bills. It's amazing to me to see the progression of sustainability from only a year ago. As much as I believe we have so much more to achieve, everyday I see little glimmers of the fabulous, blinging little jems of responsibility and thoughtfulness that was not present a year ago.

Because of this, today, I am going to start a weekly acknowledgment of the small jems we find in our everyday lives that make us sustainability Gurus push on.

Today's Sustainable Jem of the week....

Intercontinental Chicago

My husband and I were in Chicago for a wedding. As I put down my bag, I noticed a little sheet of paper on the desk on top of the "Welcome to Chicago" photo book. I was more than pleased to see the Intercon's green mission statement which included recycling, energy and water efficiency, in addition to and education and community aspect. It also listed it's Green Seal Silver Certificate as well as it's Energy Star Rating.

This little piece of information, I have to say, was a happy surprise and a positive step from the standard "reuse your towels and help save the world" that you typically find these days.