Being GREEN

There are times when we dream about the places we want to go, just to escape from the tedious humdrum of daily life…..from the incessant voices calling us to go to work, to get up from bed every single morning to face another day full of the same reports to do, people to meet --- the constancies and vagaries of our monotonous lives.

The ultra-expensive resorts scattered around the world cater to these dreams. But now, a plain escape is not everything. People have started to want to “fully” escape from their normal world of materialism and pollution. Social responsibility has become a byword for responsible & sustainable tourism.

Being in Six Senses, I am slowly understanding and becoming a convert to responsible tourism. Aside from the mandatory Green Sense trainings that all staffs go through regularly, what is more important is for us to really Believe……we need to commit ourselves to these beliefs --- the belief that even in a small way, we can help the environment and the community around us.

All Six Senses resorts in the Maldives (and in other properties as well) now have an in-house production of drinking water (through RO and 3-phase filtration process + mineralization) to replace imported drinking water and totally eradicate the influx of plastic bottles into the islands.

Another ambitious project undertaken by the company is the Deep Sea Water Cooling System in Soneva Fushi Maldives which will enable the resort (and hopefully the nearby communities as well) in the future to utilize as a cooling mechanism for all the villas hence cutting off the necessity to generate electricity for all the airconditioning requirements of the resort and to be on the road towards achieving the company’s goal of being de-carbonized by 2020.

Learning all these and living it daily have started to awaken the long dormant volunteerism spirit in me. Do you think it’s possible for my hometown to also start divesting itself of polluting habits? I do hope so.