Monarch Casino Black Hawk lightens carbon footprint with innovative environmental initiatives

Guests of Monarch Casino Black Hawk can enjoy their gaming visit even more knowing that changes in the casino’s operations are leading to lighter environmental impact. Some of the changes are noticeable to everyone, while others are happening behind the scenes.

Monarch Casino Black Hawk has switched to straws-on-request throughout its bars and buffet, instead of automatically including them with drinks. Monarch typically goes through 36,500 drink straws and stirrers per week or about 182,500 straws per month. Eventually, all plastic straws and stirrers will be replaced with paper and wood versions.

Guests may also notice the environmentally-friendly electric chargers available in the new, state-of-the-art parking garage. The Monarch garage features charging stations for electric vehicles: 5 Tesla charging stations and 2 universal charging stations that work with everything from Nissan to BMW.

Behind the scenes, Monarch’s environmental commitment includes offering team members real plates and silverware during their meal times to cut down on waste from paper plates, plastic cutlery, and disposable cups. In Monarch’s administrative offices, all shredded paper and cardboard is recycled.

“Not only is reducing our carbon footprint and becoming more environmentally friendly the right thing to do, it’s also good business,” says Craig Pleva, Monarch Casino’s general manager. “Our guests and team members have commented about how much they like the changes they’re seeing.”

Monarch is also building a new 23-story hotel and spa with new restaurants and meeting rooms, which will incorporate many environmentally friendly features like high-efficiency heating and cooling systems, hot water heaters, and plumbing fixtures, LED lighting systems and occupancy sensors that turn lights off when no one is in the room. The new hotel is scheduled to be complete in mid-2019.