Victoria Falls Safari Lodge
Eliminates Plastic Water Bottles
Kudakwashe Ruwuya serving guests water in a new re-usable Natura glass bottle
Dear Valued Trade Partner,
We, at Africa Albida Tourism, have some exciting news to share… we have replaced single use plastic water bottles with re-useable glass bottles at Victoria Falls Safari Lodge, Victoria Falls Safari Club and Victoria Falls Safari Suites.
The Boma – Dinner & Drum Show and Lokuthula Lodges bed and breakfast will follow suit in the next two weeks.
As you know, we have long rallied for conservation of the environment, and this is a giant step towards achieving our vision of being free of single-use plastic across our properties by 2021.
We aim to reduce and then remove as much other plastic as possible from our operations, to a point in 2021 where there is hopefully zero, for example, plastic laundry bags, plastic shopping bags and other plastic bottles, such as juice bottles.
This development, which will see the elimination of more than 80,000 plastic water bottles a year used across the Victoria Falls Safari Lodge estate in hotel rooms, restaurants and bars, follows the installation of the Natura water system earlier this month.
The environmentally friendly Natura water system purifies water onsite through a three-stage filtration system. The water is then put into glass bottles for guest use, after which the bottles are collected, washed, sterilised and re-used. The system produces both still and sparkling water.
It is important as a responsible business to keep pace with world trends in all conservation issues, and where possible, as with Victoria Falls Recycling, to also lead. We have researched and talked to colleagues before making informed decisions.
The impact of this initiative has many benefits – with less plastic in circulation, it is less likely to find its way into the wild and therefore potentially harm wildlife, especially elephants.
It will also have a major impact on waste management, due to a massive reduction in plastic waste that is caused by the mineral water empties, and hence much less litter to deal with in our daily operational routine.
In addition, there will also be the benefit of reduced cost of water to guests.
As a group we decided to eliminate plastic bottles from our premises entirely by providing water dispensers so guests may fill up their own water bottles to take away when going on activities, and by selling aluminium bottles in our souvenir shop.
This development comes after we stopped using plastic straws, adopting more eco-friendly paper straws instead, and launched Victoria Falls Recycling, a project which recycles plastics, paper, glass and beverage cans.
I hope you support us in welcoming these changes to protect our environment.
