Beachcomber Hotels uses plant material instead of plastic

An empty bottle that looks like plastic waste, but it’s not: Beachcomber Hotels & Resorts known to numerous golfers from their holidays on the island of Mauritius, now actively tackles the problem of “plastic waste”. All eight hotels in the group only hand out be.eau water bottles, which are biodegradable and compostable.

The innovative bottles were developed by the Mauritian start-up company BeEau Ltd. Only vegetable waste is used for production, such as sugar cane bagasse. The company has already won the World Plant-Based Awards 2020 with this idea. The extent of plastic avoidance is quite remarkable: between July 2021 and March 2022 alone, around 40,000 bottles were used and thus just as many bottles made of single-use plastic were avoided as waste.

“We launched a major campaign in 2020 to ban single-use plastic from all our hotels,” states Géraldine Koenig , Chief Officer Operational Excellence at Beachcomber Resorts & Hotels. “We already have our own water bottling in our hotels; this water is offered in glass bottles with meals. The initiative to integrate biodegradable water bottles is in line with the group’s desire to put sustainability at the core of Beachcomber’s activities and allows us to find a suitable solution to replace the plastic water bottles in our minibars and other facilities.”

EarthCheck seal

The holiday experience in Mauritius lives to a large extent from intact nature. This is another reason why it is extremely important for the tourism providers on the island to protect nature as a capital. The Beachcomber Hotel & Resorts, for example, are certified according to the EarthCheck seal for sustainable tourism. This seal is recognized by the Global Sustainable Tourism Council and verifies environmental, social and economic sustainability. The audit period is a maximum of two years. Around 600 hotels worldwide are currently inspected for the EarthCheck certificate.