`Toilets to Tarmac'

The Saunders hotels have embarked on projects that are good for Mother Earth. Here's a sampling of a few:

* When room furniture is no longer of service quality, it is donated to homeless shelters or sold to employees.

* Seven-gallon-a-minute toilets have been replaced with 1-1/2-gallon ones.

* Seven-gallon-a-minute shower heads have been replaced with 2-1/2-gallon ones.

* `Toilets to tarmac': The porcelain from old toilets is sent to a gravel company that crushes it into roadfill.

* Bathroom fixtures are sold as scrap metal.

* Green cloth napkins, which do not need as much bleach as white ones, have supplanted paper napkins at one hotel restaurant/bar.

* Paper menus are laminated so that they can be reused longer.

* Labels from duplicate magazines are returned to their source, thereby cutting down the hotel's excess.

* Recycling 2,400 phonebooks a year keeps a community recycling site in business.

* Polystyrene (Styrofoam) and aerosols are banned.

* Environmentally safe cleaning chemicals are used.

* Swan Environmental Fund: At checkout, 50 cents is added to a guest's bill; the hotel matches the voluntary donation, and the total is donated to environmental groups.