Our Blue Certified Candidate, Misool Eco Resort is a leader in sustainability. Marit Miners shares her tips on how to be good to the environment while providing a beautiful resort for her guests–and the others who share the space.

Energy

  • In order to maintain the level of service and comfort our guests expect, we need to provide electricity 24 hours a day but have worked to decrease the amount and improve the source. We have just installed a 10 kW photovoltaic system in the roof of our dive shop. We are currently investigating funding opportunities to install a further 130Kw system, which will allow us to shut down our generators completely while still operating multiple dive compressors, desalination units, refrigeration units, and air conditioners. 
  • We engineered the physical structures of the resort to minimize the demand for power.  For example, all our accommodations use traditional grass roofing material, which is a superb insulator. The roofline extends quite far beyond the building footprint, ensuring that direct sunlight never reaches the windows or walls. 
  • The rooms are fitted with low-power air conditioners.  In order to increase their efficiency, we position the units over the bed and inside a mosquito net.  This  creates a very small space to cool, so we find we can use much smaller units. 

Waste

  • We compost all our kitchen waste. We are also actively rehabilitating the soil on our island to grow more and more of our own food in an organic permaculture system. 
  • Together with our foundation Misool Baseftin, we created a community recycling program for plastic, glass, and aluminum. Called Bank Sampah in Indonesian, the program buys rubbish from the community and then the rubbish is sold on to recyclers. There are certain types of plastic which cannot be recycled which our team collects and upcycles into laptop bags, toiletry bags, etc. They are available at our retail location, the Misool Filling Station. All proceeds benefit our marine conservation foundation. 

Water

  • We harvest rain for general water use, have back-up desalination units for use in dry periods, and have our own reverse-osmosis system for purifying water.
  • Guests are issued a stainless steel water bottle to take with them on dive trips and excursions.ÂÂ