A key attribute of the RARE Touchstones that define the tenets
of Conscious Luxury Travel, Single use and dispose option has settled into the
mindset of travellers across geographies and all economic strata. As a
youngster, family trips involved carrying a canister with water that was refilled
as and when needed. Another bag had steel plates, spoons and glasses that
traveled with us and washed after every use. With the introduction of plastic
bottled water, sometimes offered as part of a ticket price, it led to a shift
in the need to carry your own bottle for water. This unique artificially
created substance began to make its way in to different shapes and sizes
and caused a radical shift from reuse to use and throw. We no longer carry our
own toiletries or cutlery – there is single use disposable option available
anywhere and everywhere. Thus we see it everywhere.
Tourism is a massive contributor to plastic pollution. The single use and dispose has made travellers and
tourism service providers embrace it with a fervor without too much thought
given to the impact on the planet. This mass adoption eventually led it to be
the biggest visible pollutant to be seen everywhere from Mount Everest to the
Oceans – with micro-plastics being discovered even in the Arctic snow!
At RARE, when we moved to actively
promoting Conscious Luxury Travel, eliminating and reducing single use plastic
was the first RARE Touchstone to be thought of. Few
single use items namely straws, bottled water, little bottles of bathroom
amenities, tea, coffee and sugar sachets, shower caps and cling film were
identified as simple items to be done away with or replaced with an earth
friendly option. Straws for example are something we can absolutely do without,
yet, for those who would like to offer straws, alternatives with materials such
as bamboo, steel and even pasta are available.
Examples of no single use plastic are
seen across the RARE Community. Our partners are keen to adopt and adapt to
ways in which to reduce the pollutant stamp. The many R’s (Reuse, Refuse,
Re-purpose, Reduce, Recycle, etc.) are a way of life.
Sarai at Toria have ditched cling film and
went ahead and made their own beeswax wrappers. Simple principles of reuse
and re-purpose were added in the process. They used beeswax from an abandoned
bee hive, thus ensuring no bees were displaced or hurt. An old item of clothing
that had worn itself out was used as a base to coat the wax on. These have been
made in to different sizes and will replace meters of cling film that are
otherwise used in a bustling kitchen.
Tiger Mountain Pokhara Lodge were clear
from day one of operations that they wouldn’t offer what is commonly referred
to as mineral water (bottled water in plastic). Instead safe, filtered water is
offered to guests. A step of re-purpose is the reuse of wine bottles (after
sterilization) that are given to guests to carry along for their onward journey
once they leave the hotel. This has resulted in preventing over 45,000 bottles
not ending up in a landfill on a yearly basis.
A common single use plastic found across
hotels is in the bathroom amenities offered. As we began to highlight the
advantages of moving away from single use plastic, many of our hotel partners
such as Lodge at Wah have moved to using ceramic
dispensers. These are refilled from bulk purchases (that are purchased in
reusable containers) thereby ensuring over 3000 little plastic amenities
bottles do not end up in a landfill.
Plastic straws are no longer offered
at Dvara Siruvani or
at Shreyas Yoga Retreat. Safe, filtered RO water is provided at the RAAS hotels, Reni Pani Jungle Lodge, Glenburn Tea Estate, Stok Palace Heritage, Lchang Nang Retreat and many other RARE
partners. The above are but a start in the adoption and execution of practices
that question the requirement of single use plastic. Today more than half of
our partners are single use plastic free with a robust conversation on to make
the entire community follow this norm.