CLEVELAND, OHIO—Hasek Communications, the Cleveland, Ohio-based publisher of Green Lodging News, welcomes Cascades Tissue Group as a Green Product & Service Directory partner. Cascades Tissue Group is the fourth largest paper tissue producer in North America and serves the hospitality, office building, institutional, and foodservice market segments. Cascade offers a broad range of products including bathroom tissue, paper hand towels, facial tissue, napkins, perforated roll towels, wipers, and dispensers.

CHICAGO—An independent panel of judges has selected the finalists for the National Restaurant Association’s inaugural Operator Innovations Awards. Three finalists in each of five categories—Sustainability, Technology, Food Safety, Health & Nutrition, and Menu Development—will be brought to Chicago for the Association’s 2012 Restaurant, Hotel-Motel Show this May. The winners in each category, plus an Innovator of the Year selected from all finalists, will be announced live during Destination: Celebration on Saturday, May 5.

EAST LONGMEADOW—Excel Dryer, manufacturer of the XLERATOR high-speed, energy-efficient hand dryer, has entered into a strategic partnership with RMSe, a retail construction, project management and fixture installation firm that manages and executes large-scale implementation rollouts, retrofits, resets, and remodel projects for a variety of high-volume retail clientele.

ORLANDO—IHG (InterContinental Hotels Group), one of the world’s largest hotel groups, announced a partnership with Clean the World to recycle partially-used soaps and bottled amenities from hotel guestrooms and distribute them in communities with limited access to hygiene products. Through this partnership, IHG has the potential to add 3,274 properties in the United States and Canada—representing 407,840 rooms—to Clean the World’s growing list of more than 1,400 hospitality partners throughout North America. IHG brands that can participate in the program include: InterContinental Hotels & Resorts, Hotel Indigo, Crowne Plaza Hotels & Resorts, Holiday Inn Hotels and Resorts, Holiday Inn Express, Staybridge Suites, and Candlewood Suites. The agreement lends corporate support for all IHG brands to join the Clean the World hospitality partnership program, which provides implementation training, supplies and shipping for guestroom amenities collected each day at participating properties. Nearly 70 IHG branded properties are already involved with Clean the World, and have helped collect 268,517 soap bars and divert more than 40.5 tons of hotel waste from local landfills.

ROCKVILLE, MD.—EcoDomo has introduced its Andeline Collection—a new line of veneer recycled leather. The new Andeline Recycled Leather Veneer features eight styles made with the same exclusive recycling process used for the company’s leather lines.

NEW YORK—Less than one year after becoming corporate partners, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. has reached a significant sustainability milestone with Clean the World Foundation Inc. Starwood has surpassed 50,000 hotel rooms participating in the Clean the World amenities recycling program. The hotel rooms represent nearly 30 percent of the total Starwood properties in North America. Clean the World and Starwood announced a corporate partnership on Earth Day, 2011. Since joining Clean the World’s hospitality partnership program, Starwood properties have contributed more than 278,000 pounds of hygiene products—soaps, shampoos, conditioners, body washes, and lotions—which would have been discarded as trash were it not for recycling efforts provided by Clean the World. Clean the World Foundation Inc. is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization committed to stopping the spread of preventable diseases by collecting, recycling and distributing hotel guestroom amenities to children and families in the United States, Canada, and more than 45 countries. Additionally, Clean the World has helped divert more than 1.4 million pounds of hotel waste from local landfills.

WATERFORD, N.Y.—North America’s fourth largest producer of towel and tissue paper, Cascades Tissue Group, announced the launch of Cascades Moka 100 percent recycled unbleached bathroom tissue, a first-of-its-kind product available to the Away-from-Home market. Beige in appearance, Cascades Moka offers commercial purchasers the highest hygienic qualities and softness while significantly reducing the environmental impact associated with manufacturing a highly common, yet also single-use product.

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND—Hospitality Battery Holder announced that the Mandarin Oriental Geneva Hotel is now using its Hospitality Battery Holder product. The Mandarin Oriental Geneva Hotel, located on the bank of the Rhone River, is the first hotel in Europe to utilize this product.

RICHMOND, CALIF.—BioMass Packaging, a division of Excellent Packaging, a wholesale distributor of sustainable, biodegradable, and nature-based packaging for foodservice and other applications, has added high-strength, compostable can liners to its line of compostable foodservice solutions. Restaurants, hotels, universities, and other businesses and institutions that need to dispose of food and organic waste can now use these clearly labeled, certified-compostable bags to confidently dispose of their food and organic waste in the green waste pickup, safely diverting it from landfills.

HONOLULU—In its ongoing efforts to “go green,” Outrigger Hotels and Resorts collected a total of 750,000 recyclables in 2011 at its owned and operated hotels throughout Waikiki, preventing more than 17.5 tons of recyclable bottles and cans from entering Honolulu’s landfill. Additionally, Outrigger then donated more than $18,000 in Hi5 redemption reimbursements to Parents and Children Together (PACT), a nonprofit organization that offers social services to Hawaii families in need. “Giving back to the community and helping to keep our island home unmarked by pollution are tremendously important to Outrigger Hotels and Resorts,” said Barry Wallace, executive vice president of hospitality services. “One of our core corporate values is ‘wahi,’ the Hawaiian word meaning ‘place,’ which states ‘we protect, care for and live in harmony with the land, our workplace, its people and cultures.’ Outrigger’s recycling program is just one example of our company’s and employees’ commitment to living our values and being contributing members of both our island home as well as the larger global community.”