The country may just have gone blue, but it's also swiftly going green. Think about the last hotel you stayed in: I bet there was a sign in the bathroom, wasn't there, asking you to help conserve water by reusing your towels. Maybe you even got a recycling bin too. More and more hotels all over the world are waking up and smelling the (organic, fair trade) coffee: showing you care about the environment means guests will care more about you.

Last week, my mother and sister came to visit me in San Francisco. I found them a room at the Orchard Garden Hotel, which touts itself as "San Francisco's purely green boutique hotel." As one of just a handful of U.S. hotels to receive a coveted LEED rating from the U.S. Building Green Council--which it was given in 2007, making it the third hotel in the U.S. and the fourth hotel in the world to score the prestigious certification---it boasts eco-friendly products, a 100% non-smoking policy, and San Francisco's first key card energy control system.

But the best part? It doesn't sacrifice luxury. Not one bit.

While the lightbulbs are of the compact fluorescent variety, you'd never know it from the sleek modern fixtures that they're placed in. The fancy-looking furnishings are made of maple wood harvested from a sustainable forest. The plush carpets and high-end drapes are fashioned from recycled materials. It is, in short, a pretty classy joint. The fact that it's super eco-friendly? Well, that's just a bonus.

While we may tend to think of green hotels as being rustic tree houses catering to budgeting Birkenstock wearers, more and more upscale properties are proving that nothing could be further from the truth. Travel + Leisure's 20 Favorite Green Hotels, for instance, features the ultra-luxurious Soneva Fushi Resort & Six Senses Spa in the Maldives, a dreamy collection of tropical villas, which has pledged to cut its greenhouse gas emissions in half by next year and achieve carbon neutrality by 2010.

Or consider insanely exclusive Cousine Island in the Seychelles where rainwater is collected and converted into drinking water, solar panels create energy for heat, and monitors in rooms allow guests to see how much water they're consuming with that after-swim shower (and curb it accordingly.) The price? A cool $1,910 a night.

Looks like respecting the environment while traveling isn't just the province of earnest backpackers anymore, and I, for one, couldn't be happier. Spread the word, Window Seat readers: you don't have to sacrifice your high thread count sheets to save the planet!

Photo: The rooftop deck at the Orchard Garden Hotel