1. Intercontinental Beijing Financial Street

The hotel places a "green card" inside each guest room to remind visitors to change their linen every two days per stay instead of every day. This helps save water and reduces pollution by using less washing detergent.

It also advises staff to switch off the lights when they leave the office.

The hotel uses energy-saving lamps and TVs to reduce consumption of energy.

Logistic operations inside the hotel's kitchen have been designed to save energy.

The hotel also uses paper instead of tablecloth at its Steak Exchange Restaurant & Bar.

Paper tablecloths reduce the usage of detergent and water.

2. Hilton Beijing Wangfujing

The hotel has environmental initiatives program for team members.

Nils-Arne Schroeder, general manager of Hilton Beijing Wangfujing, said its human resources department conducts regular environmental and awareness training to staff to encourage them to reduce, re-use and recycle.

"Other measures include the design of our hotel, such as keycard systems in all guestrooms and suites, which provides in-room control on temperature and lighting and energy-saving lights throughout and a control device that allows as much as natural light as possible in the swimming pool area," he said.

"We need to have a conscience to protect the earth's environment. It is important to have an environmentally-aware policy to the hospitality industry.

"All hotels need to have an energy-saving policy to become more "green".

3. Shangri-La's Kerry Center Hotel Beijing

The hotel has undertaken a Green Hotel program as the hotel's sustainable development strategy, which includes setting up a pro-active green team, with representatives from each department.

The teams are responsible for implementing a Green Action Plan of Best Practices for 2009 along with setting targets for better environmental performance.

Suppliers are evaluated to ensure their compliance with responsible and environmental working practices. The housekeeping department has introduced a "low-temperature laundry" service, which uses low-temperature detergents. This means that loads washed at 30 C can still come up smelling fresh. A normal hot-water wash heats up to 90 C racking up almost four times as much as electricity.

It is estimated that 10 percent of energy has been saved this year compared to the same period in 2008.

4. Beijing Landmark Towers

The hotel is practicing the concept of a "green plan".

It has used a frequency transformer in the equipment room; installed lighting-controls in public places and changed all existing lights to LED lights to save energy.

The hotel has also improved its water-saving operations.

It has increased the treatment of reclaimed water and reduced the flow of running-tap water.

It has recycled the condensed water of boilers; solved the problem of water leakage; controlled the effect of air conditioner depending on the daily temperature and manually adjusted the vapor pressure of boiler by time frequency.