We show our commitment to “Care of the Land. Care of the Wildlife. Care of the People” by looking for ways to contribute and give more to wildlife spaces and the communities that live adjacent to them. But we also believe that we can reduce our negative enviromental impact on the earth without compromising our guest experience.
We operate a high-yield, low-impact model by creating very small luxury lodges that can support enormous tracts of biodiverse land, which remains untouched and untrammeled. But, even though &Beyond ‘s footprint is very small (less than 450 bedrooms in total, which, in turn, support over 9 million acres of precious wildlife land), many of our lodges have a sustainability champion, who together with lodge managers, are custodians of our philosophy to “give more” and “take less”.
At every lodge and office we seek out small but meaningful ways of putting our values into action each day. We understand that delighting our guests is the most important thing we can do to sustain our business and thus sustain the wildlife areas we protect.
Over the years, &Beyond has introduced an environmental strategy to assess our lodges from a sustainability and conservation viewpoint. The lodges are annually subjected to an intensive sustainability audit to determine their environmental impact. This allows us to determine lodge-specified strategies to reduce that impact. Additionally, in order to understand and manage some of our impact, monthly measures are taken of the following eco-overheads:
- Water usage
- Electricity consumption
- Diesel and petrol consumption
- Gas and paraffin, charcoal usage (for illuminating and cooking)
- Firewood and charcoal
- Waste production and management
These statistics are collated and analysed in order to help identify problems, as well as to help lodges see how their innovations and savings have paid off. Efficiencies are identified and the lodges are set targets to improve and reduce their impact still further.
The champions and lodge managers look for new “take less “ ideas and, ways to reduce our energy consumption and carbon emissions, recycling initiatives, conservation awareness drives, water efficiency, elimination of exotic plants, addressing erosion, re-greening and many more. They are the drivers who ensure that each department, behind the scenes, finds practical ways of reducing our impact and creating a better company in a better world.
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