From the very beginning, the goal of Le Royal Meridien Phuket Yacht Club has been to protect Phuket's tourism industry by spreading environmental awareness, and to lead the community down this path.

The Resort is extremely involved in environmental upkeep. It has planted trees around a reservoir, which the Governor of Phuket turned into a public park. This inspired the local people to clean up their village and enter the 1995 Cleanest Village in Phuket competition, which they won.

Since February 1994, all waste water is used to water gardens. The hotel has introduced an enormous number of equipment adaptations and new procedures to save electricity, water, gas, paper and other resources. For example, the staff conduct monthly energy and resource audits, reduce the solar heating of rooms, maintain the efficiency of equipment, use energy-saving light bulbs, clean reflecting surfaces, centralise kitchen operations, and combine cooking operations to run less equipment.

The Resort ensures efficient heat transfer on pots and pans and maintains a strict policy about not wasting food during preparation. All laundry equipment is operated at the rated capacity, and ECOLAB products are used so that waste water contains little or no phosphates and chlorine.

The hotel has reduced external air emissions by gradually switching to refrigerants with low ozone depletion potential. It has discontinued Halon and dry chemical fire extinguishers, in favour of Carbon Dioxide fire extinguishers.

In addition, the hotel has implemented a successful waste recycling system (glass, plastic bottles, cans, paper, cardboard, waste metal, and wet waste). Staff is educated to save natural resources by means of stickers beside light switches and taps. There are also stickers in guestrooms encouraging guests to help reduce waste. As a direct result, laundry washes up to 40% fewer towels per month, which means less water, energy and detergent are consumed.

That's not all. Le Royal Meridien Phuket Yacht Club is doing something else that is unique and environmentally-friendly. It has recently implemented a new system for cutting down on chlorine consumption in the swimming pool. Chlorine, once used to keep the pool clean and free of bacteria, is being replaced by a new substance using natural salt.

Staff are educated by means of an environmental education notice board, speakers, training sessions by the hotel's Environmental Committee, the environmental award display in the staff canteen, and by the regular beach, hotel and road cleanup and tree-planting activities, involving school children and/or villagers to help educate the community about waste. Le Royal Meridien Phuket Yacht Club continues to communicate the spiritual values relevant to environmental education in order to create a love for the environment.

The hotel also obtained 20 Rai of Crown land which is to be made into a natural medicine forest, in an effort to conserve the plants from which Thai traditional medicines are made.

These efforts, many of which were initiated by former training manager, Peter McAlpine, have earned Le Royal Meridien Phuket Yacht Club several awards. In 1995 the hotel won environmental awards from PATA and the International Hotel Association (IHA), followed by another four awards in 1996.

Le Royal Meridien Phuket Yacht Club has done a great deal to influence the direction of Phuket's and Thailand's tourism industry. Public awareness campaigns, such as an environmental education seminar for Phuket's Police, have been successful. There are also plans to involve the Thai Ministry of Education to encourage environmental education classes in Thai primary schools.

Le Royal Meridien Phuket Yacht Club is devoted to this cause and will continue along this path of education and awareness.