Sustainable Missions

These days, most guests at luxury resorts are willing to foot some additional cost for environmental sustainability. All too often, however, it falls to them to take the proactive role, for instance by remembering to place a card on the bed to indicate linen should not be changed. Meanwhile, little is said of the single-use plastic water bottles scattered throughout the room or the energyinefficient air conditioning.

But even as luxury hotels are increasingly trumpeting their eco-friendly credentials, as hotel and resort architect Gaurang Khemka points out, ‘It’s the mid-tier resorts that struggle to implement eco-sensitive design and operations, as they’re unable to justify these commercially.’

In this context, recent years have seen a generation of smaller boutique resorts make a splash on the hospitality scene. They are genuinely proactive in minimising their carbon footprint, and — perhaps not surprisingly, given its surfeit of wildly beautiful spots — a good number are located in Indonesia.

One such locale is private island paradise Nikoi, spearheaded by Australian Andrew Dixon. When the former accounting professional first arrived in Singapore 20 years ago, he was disenchanted with the standard of holiday accommodation on offer within close range of the island. Cultural sensitivity, vernacular design, privacy and simple luxuries seemed unheard-of. Then, he and his wife fell in love with the calm azure waters of Indonesia’s Riau Archipelago, just off Singapore. Around 2007, with the help of architect Peter Timmer, they began building a simple private getaway entirely out of driftwood for family and a few friends on a private island. Nikoi’s charming openair living concept — featuring bedrooms cooled by the sea breeze and sand underfoot — quickly became so popular that the couple decided to turn it into a commercial project.

Nikoi was arguably the tipping point that led to the debut of one eco-friendly resort after the other in the following years, each vying to outdo the other in rustic chic. Bawah Reserve, a clutch of six glittering private islands, opened last year in the south of the Anambas Islands, offering three sheltered lagoons and 13 beaches. Eschewing pesticides and any heavy machinery, its 35 understated villas are constructed from canvas roofs, bamboo and recycled teak. Its upmarket bucolic vibe is boosted by a yoga pavilion, spa and infinity pool.

Jeeva Beloam Beach Camp in south-eastern Lombok, meanwhile, is the ultimate in offthe-grid getaways. Set in an isolated cove within a 55-hectare forest with limited electricity supplied by solar panels and no phone service, each of its 11 A-frame beach camps is made of recycled timber and native alang-alang grass in the style of the local Sasak architecture, and looks out over powder-white sand and the sweep of the Timor Sea.

In Bali’s Badung neighbourhood, Suarga Padang Padang perches most of its buildings on stilts to better preserve the property’s natural coral foundation and wetland vegetation, the stomping grounds of the local fauna. The buildings themselves are constructed mostly with bamboo and timber rescued from teak houses, factories and abandoned ironwood pontoons in Borneo.

And last year, the Dixons revealed their longawaited sophomore effort. Located just a boat ride from Nikoi, Cempedak Private Island is nestled amid thick jungle with each of the 20 pool villas built from sustainable bamboo and capped by roofs thatched with alang-alang. In place of walls, there are high bamboo screens and strategically planted tropical foliage that provide privacy and a very real sense that you’ve just stumbled upon a rustic-luxe version of The Swiss Family Robinson.

‘Operating on a remote private island, you have limited resources, so it makes sense to be careful of how you use them,’ says Dixon. ‘We were especially keen to make sure we protected and helped restore what is a beautiful island.’ This explains why the waste management in both of Dixon’s resorts involves composting food waste with black soldier-fly larvae and watering gardens with waste water. The incorporation of wood and grass into an open-plan design creates natural ventilation and avoids the use of energyguzzling air conditioning.

A properly conceived environmentally conscious design can also be scaled up. A case in point is Alila Seminyak, which debuted in Bali in 2007 with the goal of embodying modernity and sustainability while staying true to its Balinese context. For architect Khemka — who is also developing three ecologically sustainable resorts with the Alila group on pristine Lombok — this balancing act is exceedingly important. ‘The island is under tremendous developmental pressure,’ he says.

Having worked with the owners to reduce the room inventory from the planned 300 down to 240, he designed the resort using only local materials — wherever possible, recycled or reclaimed — sourced from within 800 kilometres of the site. Screens control the heat and provide privacy, while vetiver grass helps to clean groundwater, gardens are irrigated with rainwater and public spaces are arranged for optimal year-round natural wind flows to maximise passive cooling.

Leveraging natural resources for more sustainable practices is definitely on the rise, too. The new Six Senses Uluwatu’s 103 villas and suites are anchored by a facility that produces its own drinking water, its kitchen will be supplied by an on-site organic farm that’s watered from rain and treated waste water, and it will also make its own soap.

The last word, though, surely belongs to Dixon, who cautions against the tendency of many resorts to prefix any vaguely green initiative with ‘eco’. ‘We avoid the word in our literature as we think it’s been overused,’ he says. ‘Hotels often use it as an excuse for a shortcoming. We regard sustainability as a way of enhancing a product or service as well as saving money.’ This approach echoes the Six Senses group’s ‘waste-to-wealth’ philosophy.

Going green might not be easy, but we hope that these progressive resorts open the space for many more.