ECO-FRIENDLY HOTELS

There may be no more basic need for vacationers than finding the right lodging—and for ecominded guests, New England offers many hotels with LEED certification, low-waste operations, and creative earth-friendly initiatives. In summary, when you are looking for a place to lay your head for the night, New England’s green hotels will make sure your conscience rests easy, too.

In CONNECTICUT, the city that hosts one of the world’s best universities, Yale, also offers a master class in sustainable hospitality: New Haven’s Hotel Marcel, which opened in 2022, is the first net-zero hotel in the nation. Set in a landmark 1967 Brutalist-style building designed by Marcel Breuer, the 165room hotel is completely sustained by an array of 1,000 solar panels. Repurposed building materials have been used throughout, while new additions—tripleglazed windows, upgraded temperature and air quality controls—help make the vintage building supremely energyefficient. The restaurant serves local fare alongside biodynamic and organic wines, and 12 Tesla Superchargers and universal level-two chargers are ready to power up guests’ electric cars.

On the southwestern shoreline of RHODE ISLAND, luxury and sustainability go hand in hand at the Weekapaug Inn, located in the town of Westerly. This Relais & Châteaux property has shaped its landscape to help protect nearby Quonochontaug Pond, with vegetated buffers of native plants and erosion-fighting stone borders; plus, the resort’s stateof-the-art geothermal heating and cooling system runs on a closed loop to avoid impacting the sensitive coastal environment. Dining initiatives are another highlight: No food travels more than 155 miles (250km) to reach the property’s kitchens, and all food scraps are composted and repurposed into soil for farms in the region.

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CONNECTICUT:

The brand-new Hotel Marcel in New Haven delivers green lodgings with a midcenturymodern flair.

RHODE ISLAND: Even while pampering its guests, the Weekapaug Inn in Westerly works to tread lightly on its coastal surroundings.

Eco-Travel