From smarter energy to less plastic, Caribbean resorts go green

February 6, 2019

Generic Caribbean tourism beach scene
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At home in the United States, Ker­rie Spring­er takes pride in being envir­on­ment­ally con­scious. So when she booked a week’s get­away at the Bucuti and Tara Beach Resort in Aruba, she choose the “green stay” option, agree­ing to reuse her sheets and tow­els rather than have them changed each day.

“You don’t do that at home, so why do it at a resort?” asked Spring­er, who vis­ited the resort with her husband.

“Water in the Carib­bean is pre­cious, so why use it if you do not have to?”

Envir­on­ment­ally friendly tour­ism options – avail­able at a grow­ing string of hotels across the Carib­bean – are prov­ing pop­u­lar with tour­ists, help­ing curb cli­mate change and waste, industry groups say.

The Bucuti and Tara resort last August was cer­ti­fied as 100 per­cent car­bon neut­ral by Nat­ur­al Cap­it­al Part­ners, an inter­na­tion­al organ­iz­a­tion that works to pro­mote low-car­bon sus­tain­able development.

The resort, estab­lished by Aus­tri­an Ewald Biemans in 1987, after he moved to Aruba in the 1960s, is known for its use of renew­able energy, smal­ler por­tions at meal time to reduce food waste, and reuseable con­tain­ers for everything from ketch­up to shampoo.

Those kinds of changes are catch­ing on around the Carib­bean, with a range of hotels and resorts elim­in­at­ing single-use plastics such as straws, water bottles and sham­poo containers.

Oth­ers are switch­ing to more effi­cient air con­di­tion­ers and refri­ger­at­ors and installing LED lights, offi­cials say.

The push is part of an ongo­ing effort to make tour­ism in the region green­er, said Aman­da Charles, a sus­tain­able tour­ism devel­op­ment spe­cial­ist at the Carib­bean Tour­ism Organ­iz­a­tion (CTO).

Three cruise ships carrying a total of 7,400 passengers lined up in Oranjestad, Aruba. By Roger W (January 15, 2014) via Flickr.
Three cruise ships car­ry­ing a total of 7,400 pas­sen­gers lined up in Oranjestad, Aruba. By Roger W (Janu­ary 15, 2014) via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).

Less energy, lower bills

Loreto Duffy-May­ers, who works with United Nations (UN) Envir­on­ment, said efforts to improve energy effi­ciency, for instance, have helped many hotels cut their energy bills 30 to 50 percent.

The Para­dise Island Beach Club in the Bahamas was able to slash its energy costs, sav­ing about a quarter mil­lion dol­lars a year, through meas­ures such as installing air con­di­tion­ers that turn off when a room is cool enough and unplug­ging unused refri­ger­at­ors, she said.

The CTO’s mem­bers are 24 coun­tries through­out the Eng­lish, French and Dutch Carib­bean whose eco­nom­ies are heav­ily depend­ent on tourism.

Charles said the group encour­ages mem­bers to focus on provid­ing three kinds of bene­fits in their coun­tries: envir­on­ment­al, social and economic.

In Aruba, for instance, tour­ism provides over 90 per­cent of the coun­try’s Gross Domest­ic Product – and, by exten­sion, most of its employ­ment and tax rev­en­ue, said Frank Comito, dir­ect­or gen­er­al of the Carib­bean Hotel and Tour­ism Asso­ci­ation (CHTA).

That rev­en­ue in turn funds schools, health­care and oth­er pub­lic ser­vices, he said.

Because the coun­try’s sea, sun and nat­ur­al beauty is the primary driver for tour­ism, places like Aruba also have enacted policies to con­serve water and elec­tri­city and pro­tect the envir­on­ment, he said.

Apart from tourism; oil refinery at San Nicolas in southeast Aruba. Source: David Stanley (April 8, 2009) via Flickr.
An eco­nom­ic earner apart from tour­ism; Valero Oil Refinery at San Nic­olas in south­east Aruba. By Dav­id Stan­ley (April 8, 2009) via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0). Since the photo was taken, the refinery has become a (more?) con­ten­tious issue as per this recent news story.

Comito said the hotel and tour­ism asso­ci­ation offers reg­u­lar webinars on sus­tain­ab­il­ity issues, includ­ing waste man­age­ment, sus­tain­able design, and cli­mate change, and guides mem­bers through envir­on­ment­al cer­ti­fic­a­tion programmes.

It also holds dis­aster risk pre­pared­ness work­shops for its mem­bers — from the U.S. Vir­gin Islands to Jamaica — to help them pre­pare for worsen­ing cli­mate-related risks.

Charles acknow­ledges, how­ever, that rais­ing envir­on­ment­al aware­ness in the tour­ism sec­tor remains a work in progress.

“Most of the CTO’s mem­ber coun­tries have a high­er budget for mar­ket­ing than one for sus­tain­able tour­ism ini­ti­at­ives,” she admitted.

High turnover among hotel staff — par­tic­u­larly house­keep­ers — can also make it dif­fi­cult to ensure that green changes brought in con­tin­ue to be fully imple­men­ted, she said.

But changes slowly are tak­ing root. Biemans, of the Bucuti and Tara, said water at his resort is recycled and sol­ar pan­els provide 20 per­cent of the facil­ity’s elec­tri­city needs.

The resort also buys anoth­er 22 per­cent of its energy from a wind farm oper­ated by the Aruban gov­ern­ment, he said.

“We reuse every drop of water. Our meal por­tions are about 30 per­cent less and people are actu­ally pleased with it. We do not have a single com­plaint. And our food waste is reused by pig farms on the island,” Biemans said.

“It is good for busi­ness, the staff and cus­tom­ers. It saves the envir­on­ment as much as it saves money. The cus­tom­er has to pay less for the room, we have to pay less for energy … and in the end every­body benefits.”

Source: The Thom­son Reu­ters Found­a­tion, the char­it­able arm of Thom­son Reu­ters. Writ­ten by Jew­el Fraser; edit­ing by Laurie Goering.

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