OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK — Lake Crescent Lodge is “green.”
Not green like the trees that sway around Olympic National Park’s picturesque lake 15 miles west of Port Angeles.
Rather, the resort, featuring 60 rooms, a restaurant and gift store, is green in the sense of its energy-efficient appliances, unbleached napkins and biodegradable trash bags.
Lake Crescent Lodge is one of the most ecologically friendly places on the North Olympic Peninsula.
Since 2001, managers of the national park’s venture concessions at Lake Crescent have gone to great lengths to make it so.
And their efforts aren’t going unnoticed.
The Port Angeles Chamber of Commerce voted Monday to award the resort its July beautification award — unusual given its distance from Port Angeles.
And the lake’s 75-seat restaurant is the only one in the northwestern United States to be certified by the Green Restaurant Association, a national nonprofit group whose mission is to create an ecologically sustainable restaurant industry.
That certification — of which only 78 have been granted nationwide — means restaurant operators annually implement at least four of the association’s 126 steps to reduce waste and pollution while increasing the conservation of water, energy and other resources.
38 steps implemented
Lake Crescent’s restaurant has already implemented 38 of the steps, including simple things like eliminating disposable ketchup and mustard dispensers to more complex tasks, like installing solar panels to power low-level dock lighting.
Other steps already taken include preparing meals with locally grown organic produce free of pesticides, as well using eggs laid by chickens that haven’t been fed growth hormones.
Environmentalists have for years asked industries to adopt these kinds of ecologically friendly practices, but few in the resort industry have gone as far as Arizona-based Forever Resorts, which manages Lake Crescent Lodge and other national park concessions at Hurricane Ridge and Fairholme Store & Marina.
Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency recognized Lake Crescent Lodge and eight other Forever Resorts as “environmental leaders because they deliver results beyond what is expected or required by law,” said Steve Johnson, EPA administrator.
“These facilities demonstrate on a daily basis that economic prosperity and environmental protection can go hand in hand.”