A luxury resort, voted number one on the Conde Nast traveller’s gold list, unveiled its pioneering recycling plant yesterday, demonstrating the array of possibilities available for turning waste into wealth.

Soneva Fushi Resort inaugurated its Eco Centro plant, which uses a number of innovative technologies to recycle almost all of its waste materials into valuable products.

But over on neighbouring Eydhafushi, with just under 3,000 inhabitants, a mountain of rubbish, buried beneath the sand could be spotted from one of the resort’s stylish restaurants.

Last week, President Mohamed Nasheed highlighted the stark difference between the plush resorts and the underdeveloped inhabited islands which he said were like two different countries.

The absence of an effective waste management system is a problem that plagues the country, with most rubbish transported to Thilafushi, the garbage island, where it is burned.

In 2001, the Environment Research Centre estimated that a person living in the atolls generated 0.7kg of waste a day, those in Male’ generated 1.1kg a day while a person on a resort generated 3.5kg a day.

If the centre’s predictions are correct and the figure has risen by four per cent each year, each person at a resort now generates 4.6kg of waste a day.

But with resorts such as Soneva Fushi, throwing down the gauntlet to other resorts and willing to experiment with technologies that can be extended to the rest of the Maldives, conquering the waste problem is beginning to seem less of a hurdle.

Mother Nature

First stop on the tour of the Eco Centro was the pyrolosis oven, which burns wood waste at high temperatures to produce charcoal. This not only prevents carbon dioxide from being released into the air but saves the resort US$50,000 previously spent on buying charcoal.

Pyrolosis can also convert plastics, one of the most difficult waste products to dispose of, back to oil which can be used as bio-fuel for vehicles.

Next door to the oven is a food grinder, which pulverises food waste into biogas to use for cooking and heating purposes. Any remaining sludge can be used as an organic fertiliser.

Cans are recycled and metal sent to Thilafushi to be recycled while cardboard is slipped beneath the soil where it quickly decomposes.

The plant also has a glass crusher to mill glass into tiny pieces, which can then be re-used as it has in the resort to make table tops and a coconut de-husking machine saving the resort a further US$10,000 otherwise spent on importing desiccated coconuts.

Wayne Wadsworth, permaculture advisor at the resort and one of those involved in creating the Eco Centro, said the plant was designed to mimic natural recycling processes.

“I’m not a scientist,” he said. “I’m just a plagiarist. I just look at what Mother Nature does and I copy it.”

Wadsworth estimated the total cost of the centre, US$200,000, would be paid back in around two years because of the money saved from buying charcoal and desiccated coconuts.

New sustainable model

At the inauguration ceremony, Vice-president Dr Mohamed Waheed, congratulated staff at the resort for creating a new model of sustainability for the Maldives.

“I think you’re setting a trend for resort development and we hope that resort by resort will follow the trend.”

Referring to some islands, built to relocate internally displaced persons affected by the 2004 tsunami, Waheed said both the government and aid agencies had created “something very contrary to nature” by cutting down most of the trees on these islands.

“Our islands are a gift from the ocean and our own ability to survive depends on sustainability on these islands.”

Mohamed Ali, minister of fisheries and agriculture, said the resort’s projects showcased a number of sustainable measures that could be copied throughout the Maldives.

“We have to find a way of using what nature has given us rather than importing so the Eco-Centro will probably give a very good message and we want to give this message.”

Ambition

But the recycling plant is just one of many innovative technologies which the resort has adopted to reach its aim of carbon neutrality by the end of 2010.

At the ceremony, one of the resort’s owners, Sonu Shivdsani, said, “When I first explained the goal in 2006, everyone was laughing. But the important thing about goals is that it forces everybody’s attention.”

The overall aim, said Sonu, was to offer luxury that was in harmony with nature and to make the “impossible possible”. As one of the best resorts in the world, he added, if Soneva Fushi could attain such an ambitious goal, no other resort had any excuse.

“I want to show that luxury and nature and high standards of sophistication can work hand in hand. It’s not either or, it’s the power of and,” he said.

Earlier this month, the president announced plans to turn the Maldives into the world’s first carbon-neutral country by converting to renewable energies where possible and offsetting in areas such as aviation; he set himself the goal of ten years.

Source: Minivannews

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