WALKING THE ECO TALK AT BON SOL HOTEL Much is made these days of green issues. We try to do our bit, recycling household waste and remembering our lifetime bag (sometimes succeeding) when we go to the supermarket. For the past 60 years, the Xamena family at Bon Sol Hotel in Illetas, have taken its responsibility to mother nature very seriously and since the 1960s, has invested heavily in some quite ingenious eco friendly initiatives. The project began with hotel founder Antonio Xamena installing a heating system that burned almond shells rather than fossil fuels or combustibles, a system that is still in use today. Then in 1968, Bon Sol was the first hotel in Mallorca to install solar panels to heat the pool and provide hot water; despite 3 major overhauls, the system works perfectly well today. Waste water from baths and showers was recycled to flush the toilets and this water was then further purified to irrigate the gardens (this irrigation was halted with the introduction of new laws). Antonio’s son, Martin Xamena and wife Lorraine and son Alejandro, run Bon Sol Hotel today. Martin continues his father’s passion for the environment and has taken this eco project a stage further with the installation of an exchange system to use the rejected energy from the hotel freezers to heat the swimming pools. This is all impressive stuff but Martin’s most successful eco project to date involved acquiring two tropical plantations in Costa Rica. One offsets the CO2 emissions produced by the activity of the hotel and the other offsets the CO2 carbon footprint of the air transport of the guests and the transportation of the hotel’s provisions. It is so heart warming to know that there are people like the Xamena family at Bon Sol Hotel who go the extra mile to give a bit back – which reminds me, I must put those bags in the car!
Posted on: Fri, 08 Aug 2014 05:39:33 +0000
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