Experience Colorado’s forest with local artist-commissioned recordings. Hear the authentic sounds of day and night, perfectly synced to the natural rhythms of each season. Learn More.
At Populus, a deep reverence and love for nature is central to every decision, from its biophilic architecture to the use of sustainable materials and systems during construction. This commitment extends to the guest experience with the One Night One Tree initiative, sourcing food from regenerative farms and ranches, as well as using an on-site biodigester to compost 100% of food waste. The Road to Carbon Positive dashboard tracks these efforts to reduce embodied and operational carbon as well as offsets from renewable energy certificates and high-integrity nature-based carbon credits, ensuring transparency in our environmental impact. Below you’ll find more detail on the initiatives we’re implementing to make a difference.
As stewards of the built environment with a love of nature, we believe we have a responsibility to offset our impact. For every night you stay, we plant a tree. We have partnered with the National Forest Foundation to mitigate climate change by facilitating regionally specific tree planting and ecosystem regeneration in Colorado forests. Our goal is to plant 20,000 trees in 2024.
Lotus sustainability is a woman-owned, data driven firm that delivers responsible and progressive sustainability solutions for businesses throughout Colorado and the Rocky Mountain Region. The Lotus team will gather all relevant Populus data including embodied carbon, operational carbon, building energy systems, transportation, waste, and current offsetting strategies to create a dashboard that will track the hotel’s performance on a regular basis throughout its lifecycle.
BioGreen360, the leading innovator in distributed food waste management solutions, which diverts 100 percent of food waste away from landfills and into all-natural compost and generates real-time data to track and report the total amount of food diversion. All food waste will be inserted into BioGreen360’s waterless, continual feed aerobic digesting system that uses microbial formulae and patent-pending mechanical and evaporation technologies to repurpose waste into an array of compost and fertilizer products that will then be distributed to local farms in Colorado.
MiiR is a company that designs premium drinkware, including water bottles, tumblers, and coffee canisters, with a strong emphasis on social and environmental responsibility. MiiR waterbottles are available in every guest room at Populus, allowing guests to easily hydrate at one of our re-fillable water stations. The company is a Certified B Corporation, Climate Neutral certified, and a member of 1% for the Planet, contributing at least 1% of annual sales to environmental causes.
Superbloom is a Denver-based landscape architecture firm who designed the rooftop plantscape. The green roof is a four-season garden filled with lush, perennial trees and flowers that helps support habitats and pollination, provides a cooling effect in the harsh sun, and enhances biodiversity in the dense urban environment
Surrounding the hotel’s streetscape, Populus is planting a canopy of trees with an innovative infrastructure that provides more soil to the trees, mimicking the conditions and benefits of a forest, despite its location in the heart of the city. Made possible by grants from The Nature Conservancy and the Downtown Denver Partnership’s Urban Forest Initiative, whose goal is to reimagine how trees are planted and cared for in downtown Denver, Populus’ onsite trees are planted in structural cells using an innovative technology that has been proven to support tree growth by providing the tree access to uncompacted soil, while also supporting the weight of the concrete sidewalk. This technology allows for mature tree growth, which is particularly challenging in the harsh Denver sun, and brings significant benefits to the local atmosphere, including a three to seven percent decrease in ozone for every 10 percent increase in tree canopy, 10 degrees cooler temperatures felt when walking under tree canopied streets, and a 60 percent reduction in particulates from car exhaust fumes on streets lined with trees.
The leading organization bringing people together to restore National Forests and Grasslands. Populus’ trees will be planted in two Colorado regions: the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre, and Gunnison National Forests, which focus on forest health improvement in response to a spruce beetle epidemic and aspen decline; and the White River National Forest, which focuses on disturbance recovery from the 2018 Lake Christine Fire and is positioned at the top of Basalt Mountain. The trees planted will be a mix of Engelmann spruce, Lodgepole pine, and Douglas-fir and are native and ecologically appropriate species picked by Forest Service professionals to improve the conditions for each specific forest.