With Plastic Free July still running we would love to talk more about sustainability and to introduce you to even more exciting initiatives from our Green Pearls® partner hotels. If you want to prevent waste and live more sustainably, the 3 R’s are a good orientation:
The 3 R’s “refuse, reduce, reuse” stand for waste prevention and summarize what we can do to live as eco-friendly as possible. There are more than the three “Rs”, but since they are the best known, let’s start with them.
The 3 R’s in detail
Including the 3 R’s into your everyday life may sound hard at first but it will get easier day by day. It only takes a small change in our daily habits – for example always take a fabric bag with you – and you can easily reduce your carbon footprint.
Refuse – just say “no”
We can avoid most garbage by rejecting it. The less we buy, the less we have to dispose. Don’t we all have enough knick-knacks standing around in our apartment? Why don’t we buy loose fruits and vegetables instead of plastic-wrapped ones? And do we actually need all these brochures and catalogs? Spontaneous purchases are often those that are worst for the environment – as well as for our wallet.
Tip: In order to be able to say no, it is worth planning your grocery shopping and maintaining a shopping list. Not all supermarkets offer loose fruits and vegetables, however farmers markets or organic stores will sell them unpacked. Have a look at our Zero Waste shopping guide.
To refuse also means searching for alternatives – do I really need to buy plastic straws or can I buy the stainless-steel ones which I can use again and again? And yes, we know, the small shampoo bottles in the hotels are tempting, but quite honestly: at home we won’t use them anyway. The less superfluous disposable items we collect at home, the less we have to deal with them.
Also, our Green Pearls® partner hotels say no – for example to water in plastic bottles. At the Zeavola Resort on Koh Phi Phi in Thailand, all drinking water is produced by the resort itself and filled into reusable glass water bottles. This saves the consumption of about 95,000 plastic bottles per year!
The SCHWARZWALD PANORAMA has been working with the organization “Refill Deutschland” since April 2019 and to avoid plastic waste. At the SCHWARZWALD PANORAMA all guests and visitors can have their brought bottles filled with tap water for free.
Reduce – sort out
All the spontaneous purchases, mispurchases, freebies and the supplies that pile up in our cupboard – do you sometimes feel like you can’t breathe with all that stuff? Then it’s about time to sort out! But of course, not everything has to be thrown away, because all these things had been produced and transported which cost money and resources. Our idea: put a gift box on your doorstep, organize a flea market, donate furniture and household items to a charity store and take part in “free your stuff” groups on Facebook and Co.
The Hotel Speicher at the Ziegelsee in Germany reduced the minibar in the rooms. Because the small bottles, chocolate bars and chips bags cause only garbage. And at the hotel’s piano bar, it’s much more comfortable anyway!
Incidentally, the Creativhotel Luise saves a lot of water. Every day, large amounts of the valuable resource are used for cleaning, at home and in the hotel. Therefore, the hotel implemented an astronaut shower in the rooms consuming only 5 liters instead of the usual 150 liters per shower which is based on NASA technology. This works through a closed water cycle, where excessively polluted water is detected and disposed, while the rest is filtered and runs back into the shower head. In addition, the water is warmed by a solar system.
Reuse – make new from old
Not everything that is broken or old must be disposed of immediately. The small cupboard will look adorable again with a new coat of paint and the hole in the sweater can be stuffed quickly. In many cities you can find repair cafes where you can help each other.
Disposable products are good for the industry, not the environment. Instead of buying products again and again, we can choose more sustainable alternatives from the very beginning – using a Frenchpress instead of coffee capsules, cotton towels instead of paper towels and solid shampoo instead of liquid shampoo. You can find even more ideas in our article about a plastic-free bathroom. Reuse also means getting creative and sharing ideas with friends on- and offline and talk about alternative products or upcycling projects.
At the Genießerhotel Die Forelle employees are motivated to rethink the „throw away processes” anew in the direction of recycling. Thus, happened with the peels of fruits and vegetables which can be found dried and pulverized at the breakfast buffet – and the guests were immediately impressed by the new superfoods.
Tongsai Bay on Koh Samui uses home-made cleaners rather than chemical ones in plastic bottles and makes them from fermented pineapple shells. Other food scraps also find a new purpose: the ground of the morning coffee is used in the spa as a body scrub and makes the skin wonderfully soft and smooth.
While the 3 R’s are the best known, there are others worth to know
Recycle
Even those who keep the first 3 R’s in mind will not live garbage-free from day one. In order to recycle the waste that is generated it is important to recycle it. Of course, the recycling system varies depending on the country you live, but the advantage is always the saving of resources: materials are used again and do not have to be completely rebuilt. Organic waste can even be composted at home. If you have a garden, you can make your own fertilizer that the plants will be happy about.
The Gili Lankanfushi is located in the Maldives, where the sandy soil is rather low in nutrients. Therefore, the resort has gotten “reinforcement”: the “Rocket Composter” composts food leftovers in a short time to rich humus. Around 90% of kitchen waste is processed into fertilizer for the hotel garden. With success, you can now find organic herbs, organic salads and some fruits and vegetables growing in the garden!
A true circular economy can be found at the Maldivian Reethi Beach Resort: leftovers end up in the biogas plant, which in turn supplies the hotel kitchen with biogas for cooking. By-products, such as mud and water, are used as fertilizer for their own organic garden.
The Inkaterra Machu Picchu Pueblo Hotel has its own biodiesel plant where used oil from the nearby villages is reused. Before the hotel built the facility, the inhabitants simply dumped their oil remnants into the river – with disastrous consequences for the environment. Find out more about Inkaterra’s initiatives to protect the endangered world heritage site of Machu Picchu in our blog post.
Respect – every decision has its consequences
Every purchase, every holiday, everything affects our planet. Every piece of clothes has to be produced and transported. Behind the anonymous manufacturing chain are people that are affected by our buying behavior. With these thoughts in mind, we may decide against Fast Fashion next time and take our refillable water bottle with us.
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It’s so true that the easiest piece of trash to manage is the one you never bring home in the first place, and honestly, once you get into the habit of saying “no thanks” to extra packaging, it actually becomes incredibly satisfying.
Living sustainably starts with the 3 R’s: Reduce waste, Reuse what you can, and Recycle responsibly. These simple actions make a powerful impact on the planet.