The hospitality industry has become truly hospitable to the green movement. Sure it may have taken the near clairvoyance of entrepreneurial legends like Ted Turner in launching brands such as Ted Montana’s Grill http://www.tedsmontanagrill.com/ and half a decade for others to follow, but now many are catching the green-fever.  With authentic leaders like Ted and Laura Turner laying the green groundwork by forming their company on an eco-friendly charter, the restaurant has exploded into a national chain for all to follow.  Certainly their socially-conscious success has given naysayers lots of reasons to reassess their sustainability approach.  With as many as one million restaurants in America, the hospitality industry has the ability to make a monumentally positive environmental impact.

Not only are restaurants being guided into green, so are hotels.  Imagine that just one high-traffic hotel converting to low-flow water systems can save 1.5 million gallons of water a year while pumping up the bottom line on profits.  With water management, energy efficiency, organic food purchasing, and recycling programs becoming more cost-effective, companies able to achieve a greener ROI are sure to serve as the Pied Pipers of change.

As end-user facilities begin to demand green solutions, all types of vendors, such as distributors and manufacturers, will quickly offer green products and services in their bag of tricks.  That is good news because tricky problems around energy and water are certain to continue to require a collective mindset to create pricing parity that will motivate all to join what is referred to by some as the Green Revolution.  Thanks to a team of Atlanta visionaries, innovative thinkers are pooling their brainpower around these new issues and have formed the Green Foodservice Alliance www.greenfoodservicealliance.org to provide collaboration and best practice solutions to a major U.S. industry.

The upside for jobseekers is that the hospitality industry is one of the nation’s largest employers, so if you are eco-minded and want to make your mark, it may be time to put your talents to work somewhere in this ‘going green’ industry.  The associated hospitality supply chain has significant opportunity.  All kinds of new products and services will be created, marketed, sold, and implemented to help restaurants, hotels, and convention centers come into their own green space in the market.

So whether you are good in sales and marketing looking for an eco-equipment company, or a talented General Manager ready to find a green-minded hotelier, eco-minded jobseekers have lots of possible ways to leverage their green ideas in an industry ripe for the picking.