Hotel Akumal Caribe Working Hard to Be an Eco Friendly Resort 1/09

At Hotel Club Akumal Caribe, we are working hard to become an Eco Friendly resort .For years, we have been supporting the Akumal Ecological Association, through direct work on the Board of Directors. However, it is just in the past few years that we have made a conscious effort to improve our own initiatives and are working with our staff to create more awareness among them on the importance of conservation.

The first step was to build reconstructed wetlands for the 12 rooms in the 200 section of the bungalows. This has worked out very well; as all the water tests done have proved this method of waste management is all that is needed. The problem in expanding this system was space requirement so we opted to buy a waste treatment plant that is state of the art technology and we are happy to report that we are now 100% on this new system.

We are taking part in a program called the Mesoamerican Reef Tourism Initiative, with workshops for each department to help further our efforts towards becoming an ecologically responsible resort.

We use low wattage bulbs in many areas of the hotel, and converting more areas as we can. We are also installing water saving shower heads in most of the rooms. For years, we have asked our guests to save on water by reusing towels and by requesting sheets not be changed daily. We recently started asking guests to recycle their aluminum, plastic and glass and the maids are in charge of taking it to our collection center. We want to expand our recycling efforts throughout the property. Guests can also dispose of used batteries in a box provided at the front desk.

We are also using biodegradable products when we can find a reliable and financially viable supplier. We send a lot of our paper from our offices, already shredded, to the ecological center for recycling.  A service picks up all our used cooking oil so we don’t dispose of it into our drainage system.

Our outdoor common area lighting is on sensors to turn off automatically at daylight. More importantly, we use yellow lighting on the beach side to avoid distracting the turtles during turtle nesting season.

Our guest rooms have information on our efforts with Reef Protection, Bay Management and Protection Program, and Turtle monitoring and protection programs currently underway at the Ecological Center.

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