Best of the Maldives: Edible Straw – LUX South Ari Atoll

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LUX South Ari Atoll - edible straws

When most of what there is to do all day is savour pina coladas in the sun (or whatever your favourite tropical tipple is), plastic straws can pile up. Most resorts are moving away from plastic to a variety of sipping tools (so much so that with this post I have introduced the “Straws” tag). LUX south Ari Atoll has introduced another variety of edible straws:

  • “The biodegradable straws, made from cooked rice flour, tapioca starch and water, can last up to one hour before they soften and eventually dissolve.”
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Best of the Maldives: Plastic Bag – Conrad Maldives

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Conrad Maldives - plastic bag

Black Friday! The biggest shopping day of the year. Of course you will need something to carry all those purchases and you don’t want to be adding to the landfill with shopping bags. If you do your early Christmas shopping at Conrad Rangali you not only get a useful and stylish bag for your shopping and more, but the bag itself doesn’t just stop added plastic consumption, but it actually removes waste plastic from the ocean. The bag is made from recycled plastic removed from the ocean. Parley’s website describes

  • “The bags are made with Ocean Plastic® — a premium material created from upcycled plastic waste recovered from remote islands, waters and coastlines by our growing global cleanup network. Each Parley Ocean Bag in the artist series is made from approximately 5 intercepted plastic bottles and funds the removal of another 20 pounds of marine plastic waste by the Parley Global Cleanup Network.”

Bag for Sea Life!

   

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Best of the Maldives: Plastic Free – Conrad Maldives

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Conrad Rangali - plastic free

What you hopefully won’t find at Conrad Maldives (no matter how many people are diving how far) are stray plastics. Nor for that matter their plastic added to waste processing in the Maldives as the resort has a set a goal to eliminate all plastics. Forbes featured their ambitious campaign in its piece “How A Hotel In the Maldives Is Fighting Plastic Pollution”

  • “The South Ari Atoll hotel is working to eliminate all plastics on the property by January 2020, which isn’t an easy feat considering the resort encompasses two islands, 11 restaurants and bars, and two spas. You won’t find individual butter or Nutella packets in the morning buffet; instead, the hotel buys the products in bulk and has a machine portion them out. Mini bottles of shampoo and conditioner have been replaced with large refillable dispensers in the bathroom. Plastic straws have been ditched in favor of biodegradable ones. And more changes are afoot: the Conrad will swap out plastic keycards for wooden alternatives, metal water bottles will be given out to guests and recyclable boxed water will accompany those heading out on excursions.”

This bold initiative is just one of so many cropping up in the Maldives that I’ve now added a “Plastic” tag on the blog for all the posts about plastic reduction initiatives.

Conrad Maldives - plastic 2

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Best of the Maldives: Plastic Art – Conrad Maldives

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Conrad Rangali - plastic art

Conrad Maldives is putting the “up” into upcycling plastic with its jellyfish chandelier. The article “How A Hotel In the Maldives Is Fighting Plastic Pollution” describes this and a number of other initiatives (stay tuned) the resort is undertaking to raise awareness of plastic pollution and to minimise it from their property:

  • “The most visible symbol of the hotel’s commitment to the cause can be found inside Rangali Bar. Dangling from the wood ceiling of the open-air bar is a massive jellyfish. At first glance, it could be mistaken for a Chihuly, with its long, translucent tentacles resembling blue-tinted glass. But the sculpture comes from eco artist John K. Melvin, who was commissioned to create the site-specific piece at the resort. Melvin, whose work has appeared in places like Puerto Rico’s Forbes Travel Guide Five-Star Dorado Beach, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve, spent a six-week residency collecting more than 5,000 plastic bottles from three islands in the Maldives, sculpting and then stringing them with coconut rope, steel cable, wire and other materials. The upcycled work is titled EvoGyre, a portmanteau of “evolution” and “gyre,” which is a circular ocean current formed by wind patterns and the forces resulting from the Earth’s rotation. Plastic gets stuck in these vortexes.”

Creative approaches to eco-sustainability are looking up at Rangali.

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Best of the Maldives: Recycled Plastic Fashion – LUX North Male Atoll

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LUX North Male Atoll - plastics fashion

Keeping plastic out of oceans has become quite the fashionable eco-initiative lately, but LUX North Male Atoll is helping the environment by putting plastic into the ocean. In a manner most fashionable…on the bodies of guests. The carry a line of swim suits (for both men and women) that are made from recycled plastic. The lady’s suits aren’t quite as daring as some string bikinis, but they are made out of string – 65% recycled fish net. The swim shorts cost $130 struck me as exceedingly stylish decorated with images of turtles, sharks and creatures the eco-friendliness is helping out.

LUX North Male Atoll - plastic fashion 2

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Best of the Maldives: Eco-Video Series – Soneva Fushi

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The Netflix series “Our Planet” is the latest in the David Attenborough wildlife adventures with an increasing emphasis on its fragility and need for preservation. Soneva Fushi introduces a slate of its own budding guides to the natural world of its own little plot of sand in the middle of the ocean with its Change-Maker series and the efforts they are undertaking to preserve this little corner of our planet…

  • “Films that highlight how we’re recognising and tackling some of the issues greater than ourselves; told by the Change-Makers of Soneva. These amazing individuals represent everything we stand for – recognising that it’s their role to be part of the positive change we want our planet to see. From Ellie Butler, Soneva Jani’s Marine Biologist tackling ocean plastic to Chef Kevin Fawkes, who creates dishes beyond our wildest imagination with ingredients from our organic garden.”
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Best of the Maldives: Reusable Straw – Kuredu

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What you don’t want to find on your underwater
Maldives adventure is a bunch of ugly and harmful plastic. People around the world and no less so in the Maldives itself are re-examining how they use plastic and looking for non-plastic alternatives. One option to throwing out plastic straws, it to have a re-usable, non-plastic straw. That was the objective of FinalStraw which is like the straw that James Bond would have (if he drank his martini that way).

Kudos to Kuredu for being the first resort to introduce this elegant innovation to a challenge affecting very close to their home…

  • “Now available for guests, FinalStraw allows guests to take our commitment to reduce single-use plastics beyond Kuredu Island Resort, and provides great souvenir as well.”
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Best of the Maldives: Bottle Walls – Makunudu

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Makunudu - bottle walls 2

Makunudu has its own “green” wall for its beach massage pavilion. The design isn’t just a creative re-use of the troublesome plastic water bottles, but also the semi-opacity infused the space with a muted and dappled light in the daytime. This innovation is just one of several clever uses of bottles so I have decided to add a “Bottles” category tag with this post.

Makunudu - bottle walls

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Best of the Maldives: Seaweed Straws – Carpe Diem

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Carpe Diem - edible straws

We all can embrace the ocean with more sustainable choices in what we consume and discard. One of the areas getting lots of scrutiny these days is plastic use. Bottles and bags have already been targeted, but a more recent opportunity is to cut down the use of plastic drinking straws. Carpe Diem (note: the resort is not yet open, but the Carpe Diem cruising yacht is in operation) is not just taking a bite out of plastic use, but is introducing straws you can take a bite out of yourself:

  • ”It’s widely claimed there are enough plastic straws to wrap around the Earth’s circumference 2.5 times each day. Because they are so small, most straws are not recycled and usually end up in landfills and waterways, where they linger indefinitely, harming wildlife, and marring the natural beauty. Made to disappear and designed to have the same functionality expected of a plastic straw, Lolistraw will last for up to 8 hrs in a beverage and will have a shelf life of up to 24 months. When you’re done sipping your drink, you can eat the straw or compost it. The founders of LOLIWARE and the straw’s designers, Chelsea Briganti and Leigh Ann Tucker, have coined the term ‘Hyper-compostable’ to convey that all of their products, including Lolistraw, will break down at the same rate as food waste in compost or in the natural environment, such as a waterway.”
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Best of the Maldives: Eco Straws – Anantara

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Anantara - eco straws

Happy New Year 2018! Time to set resolutions for the year ahead. Usually New Year’s Resolutions are about making ourselves better, but Anantara is leading the way with its resolution to make its properties better at making the world better…

  • “From January 1, every [Anantara] hotel, restaurant and bar at the resorts throughout Asia will use alternatives to plastic for people to sip their drinks through. Biodegradable and recyclable alternatives will replace the 2.5 million plastic straws that had been used every year.”

What’s your eco-resolution to live a more sustainable and eco-friendly lifestyle?

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