Eco Commitment

As custodians of this sacred land, we are passionate about living lightly and respectfully, with a low-impact presence within this extraordinary landscape. This land is our inspiration; living in an environmentally friendly way inspires everything we do – from the building materials we used to the food we grow and serve. Our protective eco-philosophy helps create a very special experience that nurtures and enriches all who chose to stay here. We’re as green as we can get, so you can leave with a clean conscience!

These are some of the measures we take to reduce to a minimum our impact on the environment:

Buildings

• Our buildings follow the natural lay of the land, and are influenced by traditional Balinese design principles
• We used only local Neem wood or reclaimed hard wood for the posts and roof structures
• Our floors use locally handmade cement and terracotta tiles, locally sourced marble and reclaimed ship wood planks
• Our walls are made from local volcanic stone laid on mud bricks and mud plaster
• 90% of our doors and windows are reclaimed from old buildings in the area
• Our furniture is hand-crafted from repurposed wood and other up-cycled materials
• Our buildings enjoy natural cooling, with good ventilation, thick walls and ceiling fans
• Our bathrooms feature rain showers and water-saving toilets
• All lamps are either solar-charged, or fitted with energy-saving LED bulbs

Housekeeping

• We use only natural cleaning products for cleaning, and soap nuts for laundry (which is dried with natural sunlight)
• We place natural and locally produced soaps and shampoos in the rooms
• We change and wash towels and sheets only when requested, and encourage the reuse of pool towels for a few days
• We provide filtered drinking water in recycled glass bottles in each room, refillable in the restaurant
• The bathrooms are a semi-open so the sun and breeze dry towels naturally and prevent mould.
• All the flowers in our rooms and restaurant are from our garden
• We provide mechanically powered flash lights in the rooms for our guests
• We provide no-energy bamboo speakers for cell phones in the rooms

Kitchen and restaurant

• We focus on local Balinese cooking
• We use only local produced coconut oil or a small amount of virgin olive oil – NEVER palm oil.
• All our used cooking oil is reused to light oil lamps in the restaurant
• No MSG or other processed food is used
• The herbs come from our organic garden, and we buy vegetables from the local market or surrounding farms as and when needed
• Fish is supplied fresh-from-the-sea by local fishermen
• Sea salt is supplied by our villagers
• Locally grown palm sugar is the only sweetener we use
• We buy as much as we can from our farming neighbours to support their hard work – e.g. corn and peanuts
• We use only organic Balinese white rice mixed with red rice
• We use very limited imported food
• We have a ‘No Meat’ policy because we want to serve only fresh food, and avoid supporting the intensive farming of mass produced animals
• No straws are used for drinks – only papaya leaf stem if people request a straw
• Our plates are hand-crafted from wood, and glasses are made from recycled bottles
• We filter our well water for drinking water in the restaurant and rooms

Gardens

 

• We created our garden guided by permaculture principles
• We mulch the garden to protect the soil and to minimize watering
• We use our own home-made Neem pesticides to control garden pests
• We grow many fruit and vegetables, all our herbs and spices, and ceremonial flowers used in daily offerings
• We collect and dry scented flower buds to make our own fragrant oil
• We dry the herbs and make many products out of them. eg.herbal sea salt, herbal teas, medicine capsules
• We collect the seeds and either plant them again or give them as gifts
• We have many medicinal plants cultivated in our garden and make our own medicine
• We compost our kitchen scraps
• The grey water from the kitchen and showers supports our garden via an intelligent pipe system
• The black water from the toilets is filtered with a waste water system designed by IDEP (www.idepfoundation.org) and goes into small ponds that attracts frogs and dragon flies
• We planted already many eatable trees and will continue

Water Management

• Our four rainwater collection tanks have the capacity to store 60sqm
• All the grey water goes directly in the garden
• All the black water from the toilets are filtered with waste water garden systems designed by IDEP (www.idepfoundation.org) We have installed water-saving toilets and rain showers to reduce water consumption
• The garden is designed to require minimum watering during dry season by mulching the plants and using mostly the grey water.
• Our pool has a big volcanic gravel and plant filter as a pre-filter before the water goes to the sand filter system, and one of our pool water inlets goes through a vortex generator. Both systems are designed to use less chemicals for the pool
• To save water, we have only showers with rain water heads – no bathtubs

Other Principles

• We organise regularly beach clean ups with our guest and the local community to remove plastic and rubbish washed ashore
• We provide much needed employment and training for our local village –those without jobs or education
• Our non-recyclable or non-composted waste goes to a waste management facility in Amlapura
• We actively support and participate in the local community’s ceremonies
• We have library for information on sustainable practises
• We share our knowledge on sustainability with the villagers
• We support our local community by buying their produce or offering their skills to our guests
• Our big goal is to make the whole area clean and green!