Swift House Inn is proud to be a certified Green Hotel in the Green Mountain State. For us, sustainability means looking closely at how we operate a 20-room historic inn, restaurant, and gardens—and finding practical ways to use less, waste less, and take better care of the place around us without compromising the comfort of our guests.
Some of our most significant environmental improvements happen behind the scenes. We have replaced our boilers with low-mass, high-efficiency systems, installed a guest-room Energy Management System and programmable thermostats, converted lighting to energy-efficient LEDs, weatherized our buildings, and conducted energy audits to identify additional opportunities for conservation. Guest rooms are designed to reduce unnecessary energy use when unoccupied and return quickly to a comfortable temperature when guests return.
We have also changed many of the everyday products and practices we use to run the inn. Our housekeeping team uses environmentally preferable cleaning products, and we choose recycled and post-consumer paper goods and containers whenever practical. Recycling is available throughout the property for both guests and staff.
Our restaurant and gardens give us other opportunities to keep useful materials out of the waste stream. Food scraps and seasonal kitchen waste—including the many pumpkins we use each fall—are collected for pig feed rather than thrown away. Across the property, we compost yard and garden waste and turn it into mulch that goes right back into our gardens. Leaves, clippings, and other organic material become part of what helps us grow the next season’s flowers and vegetables.
Guests can be part of these efforts, too. Through our towel-reuse program, towels left hanging are left for another use, while towels placed in the tub or shower are replaced. Bottles, cans, newspapers, and other recyclable materials can be placed in the recycling bins provided in guest rooms and throughout our three buildings. We also encourage guests to turn off lights when leaving their rooms; our energy-management system automatically adjusts heating and cooling while rooms are unoccupied.
We don’t consider sustainability a finished project. We continue to look for better products, smarter systems, and practical changes that reduce our consumption of energy and natural resources, minimize waste, and lessen the environmental impact of operating the inn.
Our goal is simple: to care for Swift House Inn and the Vermont landscape around us thoughtfully, so that welcoming guests here also means taking good care of the place they came to experience.Swift House Inn is proud to be a proponent of eco-friendly tourism and of our designation as a “Green Hotel in the Green Mountain State.”
This certification is a recognition of our pledge to protect our environment through our practice of reducing our energy use, recycling, changing our practices to be more environmentally friendly, and seeking out alternative energy sources like solar power.
We have made many changes to our footprint with the installation of new high-efficiency boilers and changing light fixtures to LED lighting. We have also changed to environmentally friendly cleaning products, and most of our paper and containers are from recycled and post-consumer products. We aspire to make recycling easier and more convenient for all our guests and staff. Lastly, we try to initiate new ways to reduce energy usage without impacting the comfort of your stay.
