Celebrity Cruises has a machine that kills bacteria in pillows and sanitizes and deodorizes the filling, allowing it to significantly reduce pillow waste. That’s just one example of how the travel industry utilizes sustainable practices to protect the environment, reduce energy costs and improve the guest experience. Here are some other ways that we as an industry and as individual travelers can go green:

Linen cards. It’s not hard to reuse a towel − most of us do it at home. Follow the instructions on the card found in many hotel rooms and let the housekeeper know you’ll use it again. The same goes for bed sheets.

Lights out. Even easier is turning out the lights when you leave the hotel room. To be more energy-efficient, more and more hotels and cruise ships are turning to LED lights, which last 25 times longer, use 80 percent less energy and generate 50 percent less heat than halogen and incandescent bulbs. Also becoming widespread are CFL (compact fluorescent lamps) lights.