Club Earns Three-Palm Designation

Holly Houser, Ocean Reef Press Editorial Assistant

Last month, the Florida Green Lodging Program recognized Ocean Reef Club as an environmental leader, awarding the Inn for a second time with a Three Palm rating as a tribute to its proficient environmental efforts.

The Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s Florida Green Lodging Program recognizes lodging facilities that make a commitment to conserving and protecting Florida’s natural resources. They’ve implemented a tiered Palm status where lodging properties with more green practices are awarded a higher number of Palms. Factors considered include conserving more water and energy, minimizing waste, improving air quality and practicing pollution prevention.

Ocean Reef received its first Three Palm designation in 2017, up from a One Palm designation the year before, for implementing initiatives including separating Inn room trash and recyclable items, contributing used linen and terry to homeless shelters and other charitable organizations, reusing keys and key packets that are in good condition, and encouraging guests to use the ORC website rather than paper items. They also reprogrammed all golf carts to have energy efficient charging and began offering newspapers per request rather than delivering them automatically to all occupied Inn rooms.

This certification is reevaluated every three years and on January 24, 2020, Ocean Reef was again designated a Three Palm certified property. In addition to the efforts named above, there were initiatives implemented over the past three years. Some of these include a 20% reduction in the lodging operation’s use of copy paper and the addition of a water station in the Inn Lobby to cut the use of bottled water.

How Members Can Get Involved

During the week of Earth Day, which this year is on Monday, April 20, look out for an E-Waste Drop Off day where Members can rid themselves of televisions, computers, phones, printers, DVD/VCR players and other electronics, a drop-off location for used clothing and furniture, a Shred-It Truck, a mangrove clean up, and more.