In a bid to eradicate plastic use at a 5-star resort, Shangri-La Yanuca Island general manager Francis Lee says an estimated $100,000 or more will be used to construct a bottling company at the resort.
Speaking to The Fiji Times last week, Mr Lee said they were moving away slowly from using plastic for shampoo bottles and conditioners and would substitute with palm ceramic containers.
“We don’t want to use plastic bottles any more, we want to use glass bottles and have our own water,” Mr Lee said.
“This is beneficial for us in the long run, so the project is already in the plans.
“Hopefully, by next year, in the second quarter, this will be put into place.”
He said the resort was also looking at sustainable ways to manage food waste.
“We also plant herb gardens, lettuce, cucumber, eggplant, and tomatoes, you name it.
“We also rear chickens for eggs.”
He said the resort also looked into what kind of food was being made for guests, especially managing food waste.
“When you have over 1000 people during the normal busy period, there’s a lot of mouths to feed so we need to be very careful how we prepare the food,” he said.
“When you think about unfortunate countries around the world, that goes hungry, and you have so much food to throw away, that is a sin.
“So, we try not to do that, we are very careful with that.
“Shangri-La has a very strict way of controlling food that when we prepare food, we need to know how long this food will stay fresh, and some food might have a longer life span, that’s why we said earlier, we want to be very careful of how much food we prepare and what are the wastages.
“So, every food we prepare, we will label it, for how long it will last and some food can last one or two days, some when you cook it within the next few hours or within the day, you need to discard it.
“So not only is it about saving money, it’s also about being responsible for what we are preparing and consuming.”
