I just took a trip to San Francisco. The hotel I stayed in had some odd mixed messages related to green issues. They encouraged me to forego daily washing of my linens and towels so that I could help them help the environment. This always makes sense to me. Who changes there sheets every night at home. Why would you need to at a hotel? And the amount of water and energy this saves is significant. Kudos.

But then, when I came into my room they insisted on having the TV turned on playing soothing music with videos of waterfalls and flowers cycling through. It’s pretty normal that nicer hotels will turn your clock radio on to a classical radio station, a practice that I dislike as it is, but this seemed just crazy. They were running a TV for hours and hours with nobody at all in the room. To make matters worse it wasn’t some high-efficiency LCD panel, it was an old CRT-based tube television just sucking down the watts.

What’s the point of having this TV on all hours of the day? I can only imagine if a visitor from Europe or Japan comes they must be stunned. Lights on, TV on with soothing waterfall videos – for nobody. Just wasting energy. But meanwhile, I’ll make sure to reuse my towels. What a mixed message.