Populus Hotels—a collection of carbon positive hotels—has revealed that Populus Seattle has secured 2,000 tons of certified carbon credits as a part of its nature-based sustainability strategy as it prepares to open.
Populus Seattle is a historic adaptive reuse project that transforms the 1907 Westland Building into a 120-room boutique hotel, restaurant and rooftop bar. The certified carbon credits serve to offset the property’s embodied carbon footprint making Populus Seattle—located in the city’s Pioneer Square—the second carbon positive hotel in the country by its opening this month according to the company. The hotel was created by developer Urban Villages and brought to life in collaboration with independent hotel operator Aparium Hotel Group.
“We are proud to open Populus Seattle as a carbon positive hotel with a reverence for nature,” Jon Buerge, president of Urban Villages, said in a statement. “The greenest building is the one that’s already built and that is true of this historic property. For Populus Seattle, adaptive reuse serves as the foundation of our evolving sustainability strategy, which includes certified forest carbon credits through King County as well as Populus Hotels’ One Night, One Tree Program that plants a tree for every night’s stay, among other nature-based solutions that take a local approach to supporting our mission of putting the health of the planet first.”
For this latest initiative, Populus Seattle worked with King County’s Forest Carbon Program to acquire high integrity, Verra certified forest carbon credits from King County-based projects whose core impacts include supporting land conservation, new parks, and greenspaces.
Other efforts, which will offset the hotel’s operational carbon footprint throughout its lifetime, include an investment in planting trees, reforestation and local silviculture, collaborating with local and regional farms to promote regenerative and organic practices, using 100 percent renewable electricity, and turning all the hotel’s food waste into compost, according to the company.
Populus Seattle follows the October 2024 opening of Populus Denver, another carbon positive hotel, and will employ many of the same environmental solutions.