Plenty of hotels opt to wash your towels and sheets only upon request and say they’re saving the planet. Others will fill their property with flora and call it being “green.” But a new hotel in Denver is so genuinely committed to eco-friendly practices that it claims to remove more carbon from the atmosphere than it creates.
That’s the mission behind Populus, the first carbon positive hotel in the United States. Not only does the architecturally distinct building check a bunch of eco-friendly boxes—from locally-sourced construction materials to an on-site biodigester for food waste—but its “One Night, One Tree” program plants a tree elsewhere in Colorado for every overnight stay.
Maybe just as important for the average Mile High City visitor, Populus is an admittedly pretty stylish place to stay, with absolutely lovely hospitality and just a bit of a luxurious touch. That’s what Time Out video editor Mykal Bane thought after she was invited to spend a few nights at the 265-room hotel around its opening last October—and shared her experience with me for this story.
“Sometimes there’s this idea that your life is now harder because you’re doing all the things for the environment that may not always be the most convenient thing for people,” Mykal says. “But I think they made the eco-friendly aspect very easy: It felt like a normal day.”
The hotel certainly doesn’t look normal, though. The 13-story tower, situated between Denver’s central business district and civic center, resembles a cheese grater or a bunch of mouths or maybe stacks of whistles. But its holey exterior is actually inspired by the eye-like scars on aspen trees. The distinctive design comes from Studio Gang, the architecture firm behind Chicago’s wave-like Aqua Tower and New York’s cavernous American Museum of Natural History expansion.
Inside, the first thing that’s likely to hit you is the smell—don’t worry, in a wonderful way. “I can’t emphasize enough how good it smells,” Mykal says of the rich, earthy lobby scent. “The hotel says that people ask if they pump perfume into the air, but it’s just all from the materials they use.” In particular, you can thank the ruffled tapestry above the ground-floor restaurant for the aroma; though it looks like brown leather, it’s actually crafted out of fragrant reishi mushrooms. (In addition to lobby spot Pasque, you’ll find indoor-outdoor rooftop hang Stellar Jay, which offers some pretty stunning skyline and mountain views.)
After you check in at a large oak desk, you’ll be handed a small, recycled wood disc that functions as your room key. As you leave the honeycomb-like lobby behind for the elevators, you’ll be serenaded with sounds from actual aspen tree groves. Thousands of hours of field recordings loop inside the elevators, and each recording originates from the current time of year. “Think of National Geographic, if they just threw a mic wherever they're filming,” Mykal elaborates. “That's kind of what you’re getting: You hear the little little crickets chirping and the cicadas and the birdies—but it doesn’t sound like a Disney movie.”
The rooms themselves, which start around $299 per night, come in three different sizes, but the eye-shaped windows mean there are actually a staggering 65 different room configurations. Maybe the most enviable feature: a cushioned cutout in some of the midsized rooms that lets you lie in the windows (just look for one of the “hammock” reservations, or request one when booking).
You’ll find some obvious eco-friendly touches inside the rooms: LED lighting, smart thermostats and no-single use plastics. There was also a very deliberate choice to forgo a parking garage, and the on-site restaurants boast about their ingredients, all sourced seasonally from local regenerative, organic farms. But some of the hotel’s most unique and impactful features are just out of sight: a biodigester composts all of the building’s food waste, which gets dumped at local farms once or twice a year; the structural components of the building were created with low-carbon concrete, while high-touch areas were crafted with long-term durability in mind; and the hotel’s construction was offset with carbon credits while its day-to-day electricity needs are met with Renewable Energy Certificates from Colorado wind farms (in other words, the turbines aren’t directly powering the hotel, but Populus is purchasing credits for their contribution to the electric grid).
By far the most novel feature, though, is the “One Night, One Tree” program. Through a partnership with the congressionally-created National Forest Foundation, Populus plants a seedling for each overnight stay in one of its rooms. Specifically, three native trees (Engelmann spruce, Lodgepole pine and Douglas fir) will be planted in the state’s Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre, Gunnison and White River National Forests. The process isn’t always perfect—Colorado Public Radio reported last fall that most seedlings had been unable to survive the winter and drought—but nonetheless Populus has set an ambitious goal of planting over 200,000 trees in 2025.
If you add all of those climate change efforts up, Populus should technically be removing more carbon from the atmosphere than it’s putting into it—and the hotel has an online dashboard set up where you can monitor its progress. (As of publication, it’s 105% of the way to carbon positivity, meaning it’s sequestered more carbon than it’s emitted.)
“If you’re going to travel—and if you’re maybe going to pay a little bit extra—it might as well go to a really good cause,” Mykal says. “And really, it’s just a cool place to be.”