When Brigida Ruiz opened the door to a “green” hotel room that hadn’t been cleaned for several days, she says her heart sank at the sight of the dusty, stained carpet.

“Can you imagine how a room gets after one week without cleaning service?” says Ruiz, who has worked as a hotel-room attendant for 18 years at the Sheraton Centre Toronto.

“It’s dirty, filthy. Really stinky.”

Ruiz says it took her longer to clean the room and she used more electricity, more water and more cleaning products than she normally would — hardly a save-the-planet exercise, she argues.

But that’s exactly what the U.S.-based Starwood Hotels chain is touting with its “Make a Green Choice” program, which invites guests to “conserve natural resources” by declining daily housekeeping in return for 500 loyalty points or $5 in food and beverage vouchers a day.

The green initiative, rolled out last summer in 140 Starwood hotels across North America — including at least five properties in Metro Vancouver — has hotel workers and their union seeing red.

They say the program is a bogus green plan that does nothing for the environment. But it does result in reduced shifts and more work for housekeeping staff, says Michelle Travis of Unite Here Local 40.

The union represents about 8,000 hospitality workers in B.C., including Starwood’s Westin Bayshore in Coal Harbour and the Sheraton Vancouver Airport in Richmond.

“This has been a real problem for housekeepers for the hotels,” says Travis.

“It’s just a cost-cutting measure on the part of the hotel employer.”

The Westin Bayshore defended the “Make a Green Choice” program in a statement emailed to The Province.

The program helps “hotels save energy and reduce water and chemical use” and has saved more than 31 million litres of water, 38,000 kilowatts of electricity and 42,000 litres of chemicals across the Starwood chain in its first six months, the statement said.

An estimated 4.5 to five per cent of guests at the Bayshore avail themselves of the program, compared to eight per cent companywide, says hotel spokesman Mitchell Fawcett.

The Bayshore was unable to say exactly how much water and electricity it has saved, Fawcett says.

“Since it’s been such a short time, we’re still assembling property statistics and don’t have a full tally we can share at this point,” he says.

One room attendant at the Bayshore, who asked that her identity not be published for fear of repercussions in the workplace, says she doesn’t see how the program — dubbed the “fake green-card program” by critics — is environmentally friendly.

“It doesn’t save the environment. But it’s bad for us, because we are losing hours and there’s more work,” she told The Province.

If 45 rooms opt out of housekeeping in a day, three staff members lose their shifts, says the 18-year employee.

But by the time workers finally clean a “green” room, the rooms are messier, the garbage stinkier and the towels are “like a mountain,” she says.

They also take longer to clean, forcing workers to rush the job in order to meet their daily quota, she says.

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