This Seaside Membership in Colombia Has Scuba Diving, Horseback Driving, and an Award-winning Sustainability Program

When selecting a seashore trip, recycling might not be entrance of thoughts for each visitor, however it’s what Portia Hart — the British-Trinidadian proprietor of Blue Apple Seaside — needs to speak about. “It’s not a really catchy matter,” she says with amusing. “But it surely excites me.” This summer season, Hart’s basis gained a $50,000 grant in recognition of the lodge’s glass-recycling operation. “It’s big for us,” she says.

That challenge is simply one of many improvements on the 11-room lodge on Isla Tierra Bomba, 20 minutes off the coast of Cartagena, Colombia. With pulsing poolside DJ units, a scuba heart, and an outside cinema, Blue Apple is undoubtedly a great time. However the lodge additionally has severe sustainability cred (it’s a licensed B Corp): 50 % of the lodge’s power is solar-generated, and kitchen waste is composted or fed to the property’s livestock.

T+L sat down with Hart to study extra about Blue Apple’s sustainability efforts.

What introduced you to Colombia?

I’d been dwelling within the south of France and got here right here to study Spanish in 2014. I by no means left.

What makes sustainability a problem at Blue Apple?

Our location. There’s no bridge or tunnel from our island to the mainland, plus no public transportation, working water, or paved roads. So we depend on boats, which run on gasoline and diesel. I’m all the time asking: How can we decrease gasoline and use carbon offsets?

How can small inns like yours create extra constructive impacts of their communities?

Don’t really feel like you possibly can’t do it. I ended overthinking and determined to behave with one small change, after which one other and one other. Right here, we flip glass waste from across the nation into sand to be used in building, or we repurpose it into art work.

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Does being a lady of colour impression the way you run Blue Apple?