Club Paradise Palawan is located in a 19-hectare island in Coron, Northern Palawan called Dimakya Island. Being an island resort with abundant marine life in its surrounding waters and rich in a variety of flora and fauna, waste materials have to be disposed of or repurposed properly in order to keep the environment clean, green and healthy.
Some of the waste management problems that the property faced were:
- Lack of regular collection and hauling of compostable and non-biodegradable waste. Aside from this, the transportation fees for hauling is expensive.
Club Paradise Palawan commissions a waste management group to ferry waste outside the island for proper disposal on the mainland. However, the extra weight of waste incurs high costs to the company which definitely impacts the operational expenses.
Around 30% of the waste is compostable such as fruit and vegetable trimmings, fish guts, and food scraps. While around 70% of the waste is non-biodegradable such as plastic bottles, plastic bags, old car tires, scrap fabrics and more. These were all disposed and hardly repurposed. There were also certain periods in the year wherein collection was not done regularly due to the unavailability of transportation services.
- The Material Recovery Facility (MRF) of Club Paradise Palawan is a small area only and plastic waste have been accumulating over the years. In the mainland, there are no proper recycling facilities as well.
Club Paradise Palawan has to comply with the Philippine’s Republic Act (RA) 9003 or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000. Therefore, single-use plastics used for bath amenities, drinking water, snacks and other basic resort amenities had to be eliminated or reduced. Based on resort records, Club Paradise Palawan used approximately 120,000 plastic tubes for amenities like lotion, shampoo and hair conditioner. For bottled water given to guests, the resort ordered around 5,107 bottles per month or an average of 60,000 per year. All of these were single-use plastics that were simply thrown away and they are non-biodegradable waste with a life expectancy of over 1,000 years!
Club Paradise Palawan team created the EcoConserve Program. The program is comprised of 4 teams namely: GarMa (Garbage Management) Task Force, Green Thumb, Sea Guardians and FEW (Fuel, Energy, Water) Champs. All teams were created to work towards the program’s primary goal which is to Rebuild, Protect and Conserve. Three very important tasks to ensure that the island and its surroundings are properly cared for.
The primary team in-charge of the waste management project is the GarMa Task Force. They were given the challenge to spearhead solutions to the 2 major waste management issues that the resort was facing. Their goal: to craft winning solutions and to turn “waste into wonderful” – they rose up to the challenge.
First, a campaign to reduce single-use plastics was created. They looked at each department and checked what items should be replaced or eliminated altogether. Buy-in is also vital so the leaders educated the team on the importance and implications of this campaign. GarMa Task Force also did a cost analysis to make sure the expenses were kept to a minimum.
The resort started with replacing small plastic tubes for bath amenities with 500 ml refillable pumps. The plastic wrappers and packaging were changed to recycled paper. An investment was also introduced – the Ecopure Water Purification System. This allowed the resort to purify and bottle their own water for guests’ consumption. Reusable bags were set-up in all villas, all plastic cups replaced with paper cups, metal straws were introduced in lieu of plastic straws, plastic bags and cutleries replaced with cassava-made versions …and the list continues to grow. Although, 100% elimination of single-use plastic has not yet been achieved, Club Paradise Palawan continues to think of ways to reduce its use.