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The term net-zero can – and often does – mean carrying on with environmentally damaging practices and simply donating to a tree-planting scheme. Handy for the marketing, but not very impressive!
Our approach is to focus on our operations – the way we build and run the retreat, so that we minimise our negative impact in the first place. Read on to discover some of the ways in which we do this.
The entire retreat is built primarily from two materials: Stone and wood.
All of the stone we used is local granite and its variants, sourced from within just a few miles of the retreat (and in some cases, actually within our site). It’s a great building material, looking beautiful and naturally protecting the structures from pesky termites without the need for pesticides.
The wood we use for structural building is a mixture of pine and eucalyptus, both sourced from licensed, sustainable plantations a little over an hour from the retreat at a place called Mafinga.
Much of the most visible wood, including almost all of our furniture, the chalet floors and the inside of the sauna, is teak. This is from a place called Ifakara to the east of the retreat, and what we buy is mostly farmed in small blocks by local people on traditionally-owned land.
Pictures in the gallery below from one of our own sourcing trips show the teak trees, felled timber, the owner of one of the local sawmills known as “Queen” and how it looks as the finished furniture in the lodge.
Of course, any building does have an impact on its environment, but our design process has prioritised minimising that as much as possible.
All of the structures are single-storey. This means smaller foundations and less materials like concrete compared to bigger structures.
The chalets are built on stilts, again reducing foundations and materials, while also giving them a much more elegant appearance floating above the steep hillside.
We’ve generally built large, airy rooms with high ceilings and windows shielded from the intense sun by verandas. This helps keep the rooms naturally cool, so we don’t need energy-eating AC (being at 1,700m above sea level helps too – it’s a lovely temperate climate).
The main walkway through the retreat is built from blue gum, a particularly hard type of eucalyptus that grows well locally and naturally resists the elements without the need for chemical treatment.
The retreat is off-grid, powered entirely by solar. This has the obvious benefit of emissions-free electricity, but it also gives us the considerable advantage of stable, reliable power 24 hours a day.
Travelling in the developing world is a great adventure, but often comes with the inevitable powercuts, turning on the shower to a luke-warm dribble, or fluctuating voltage slowly frying your laptop and hair straighteners.
Ensuring you can depend on the comforts of home at the end of a day’s hard yoga or exploring the trails has been a cornerstone of our design, and the state-of-the-art solar system guarantees you’ll always have lights, safe outlets to plug into and a high-pressure piping hot shower.
We also heat 100% of our water with the sun, using solar thermal panels and insulated tanks to hold the heat in even through the coolest, darkest nights.
Solar thermal is a brilliantly simple system with very little that can go wrong, and is perfect for our position so close to the equator. Water heaters are also connected into a system that can boost them using the solar-charged batteries, just to make sure they never run out.
If two guests in each of our rooms drank a couple of disposable bottles of water every day, we’d be throwing away 8,760 plastic bottles a year. That’s inexcusable.
We have a new filtration system on site that purifies water we pump (using solar!) from the mains supply to ensure guests have free, unlimited, safe drinking water throughout their stay without a single disposable plastic bottle in sight.
Wood burners can be an incredibly efficient (and in fact close to carbon-neutral) way of heating rooms – not to mention the glorious cosiness of a real fire crackling away in the corner!
The key is to have well-engineered stoves that control the airflow to burn very efficiently (ours are handmade just over the border in Kenya by the lovely folks at Rusty Fundi), and burn dry, well-seasoned wood.
Selectively felling trees and carefully replanting is an important part of our own woodland management, and is actually essential to help mitigate the risk of wildfires. We use pretty much the entire tree one way or another, and produce our own firewood this way to ensure it has only come from this sustainable source.
Learn more about our nature and biodiversity projects here.
Contact us to discuss your retreat plans, get a quote or join our mailing list.
Contact us