at la casa verde we believe reducing, reusing and recycling (in that order) is key to living sustainably.

we reduce by:

not using any unsustainable materials, e.g. jungle hardwood, endangered animal products etc…

avoiding products with packaging which cannot be reused or recycled

using (and encouraging our guests to use) the available reusable carry bags and plastic containers when shopping and to say ‘no thanks’ to the endless offering of plastic bags – the lovely supermarket workers think we’re strange when bulk filling our re-usable plastic containers and carrying them in our backpacks…but they’re getting the jist of it now

offering free drinking water refills to our guests so they don’t need to keep buying plastic water bottles

encouraging guests to ‘take nothing but photos and leave nothing but (light) footprints’ on their journeys

we reuse:

paper/cardboard and turn it into interesting (probably not award winning) artwork, garden mulch and window/mirror cleaners

glass bottles to create interesting windows and (once we’ve drank enough wine) a glass bottle green house

plastic containers to store food or grow new seedlings

food scraps (composted or fed to our neighbours’ animals), water and human waste (through our septic system) on the property to make the garden even more luscious.

we recycle by:

rubbish is washed and separated into 5 bins in the kitchen – glass, aluminium, paper, food scraps and non-reusable or unrecyclable plastic (we are proud to say this is our smallest bin and only needs emptying every couple of months – amounting to very little waste)

aluminium is sold (yes, you can make a little money from recycling aluminium here – it’s not a ‘get rich quick scheme’ though) to a local collector who sells it on to a recycling plant

making recycled paper – used for our visitor book and available to buy for sending those long ‘wish you were here’ letters home