Jamaica’s first inhabitants, the Arawaks named Jamaica, ‘Xaymaca’ – The Land of Wood and Water“. Today local communities face the challenge of food and water security, the result of deforestation and global warming which over the last 3 decades has meant that areas of the island suffer mild to severe drought.
In our quest for sustainability, to enhance our guests stay and lessen the effect of drought on the hotel, we removed the impact of our business footprint from our struggling national water provider. 70% of national water is lost in leaky pipes and a staggering 69% of Jamaican households receive untreated water.
On a rainy day we have the capacity to harvest a staggering 85,000 gallons of the softest rainwater which we treat, store, heat and pump into our hotel to reduce each of our guest’s carbon footprint and the strain on national water provision. The water is treated by UV and reverse osmosis and not only tastes much better than chemically treated water but stops any reliance on imported bottled water. Each of our guests and staff are guaranteed a powerful, stable water supply no matter what the climatic conditions are and which is environmentally clean as it uses only the energy from our solar panels during the day to produce it.
In December 2015 we were awarded a grant by CHENACT that will allow us to store the energy from our solar panels by the end of the summer of 2016 in an aqueous hybrid ion battery. Our guests will then have access to a water supply that is completely carbon free, removing the need to use the JPS national grid for electricity at night that is generated by burning imported oil.
