Sunday, 14 March 2010

AlmaVerde invited to help promote sustainable tourism development

AlmaVerde Village & Spa has been invited to become a founder member of Sustain, a new, not-for-profit organization dedicated to highlighting the importance of environmental and social factors in residential tourism and hospitality projects.

Sustain aims to drive sustainable development up the agenda in the minds of property buyers, increasing the appetite for developer members’ properties and propelling the more widespread adoption of sustainable practices.

Sustain aims to provide its members with high-profile positioning in professional and public spheres. It will create an open, online knowledge-sharing forum. It will run workshops on practical sustainability issues, and also plans to commission research papers on subjects of interest to its members. 

Sustain is the brainchild of Gordon Miller, journalist and founder of www.whatgreenhome.com, and Anwar Harland-Khan of MHK International, developer of L’Amandier in the Atlas Mountains (see www.lamandier.com). Harland-Khan will act as Sustain’s initial Director General, and Miller as its Sustainability and Communications Director.

Sustain will be launched to the public on 6th September 2010 with a capped first-year membership of 50 of the world’s leading sustainable developers and professionals.

Each developer invited to join Sustain has a project scoring at least 3 “green ticks” on the www.whatgreenhome.com website. This evaluation method takes into account the project’s carbon footprint, its policies and practices on waste handling, water conservation and transport, and its use of locally available and sustainable building materials.

AlmaVerde currently scores 4 out a possible 5 green ticks, and its recent acquisition of a fleet of electric golf buggies for use by villa cleaning and maintenance staff may spur the whatgreenhome.com panel to consider awarding the missing green tick for transport.