la casa verde
eco guest house, baños, ecuador
reduce, reuse, recycle…
© all texts, photos, designs and color schemes all rights reserved la casa verde eco guest house, camino real, santa ana,
baños de agua santa, tungurahua, ecuador (t) +593 986 594 189 (e) [email protected]
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
please see also, 4 eco definitions