I’ve been in Montréal, Quebec for the last 5 days, and this has kept me from posting here at Go Green (sorry about that). But the silver lining is that I am able to get a feel for what another city is doing to reduce it’s impact.

Overall, Montréal certainly felt more progressive than most American cities (including Charleston), but not even close to what I saw in Vancouver last year. Nevertheless, there does seem to be an effort underway to green up the city, something I soon hope to see in our neck of the woods. Check out my notes after the jump.

• I stayed at the Hilton Bonaventure, and noticed they had done several things to go green. First off, there were CFL bulbs in almost all fixtures, something I still don’t see a lot of in the States. There were recycling bins in most rooms, including the meeting facilities. They also have a program in place which encourages guests to leave there towels on the rack to avoid excessive washing - something that wastes a ton of resources each year.
• There is a well developed underground tunnel system to keep people from having to walk outside in lousy weather. The side benefit of this is that fewer people passing through open doors, which allows energy-intensive hot and cold air to stay IN the buildings.
• There is a decent amount of recycling bins located throughout the city and airport. I still can’t figure out why this is still so rare stateside - why can’t we make this happen?
• Decent public transportation was running throughout the sprawling city. I saw plenty of the typical big city buses running around the grid, but I was more jealous of the train system. Commuters flowing in and out of the tubes makes the planet happy.

There you have it.