Vanua Levu beach accommodation, Fiji

Our guest accommodation has composting toilets on the waterfront. The rooms have solar lights. We remind guests to conserve power and water as many of them have never experienced being in an Eco environment. We have a guest information folder where we inform people of the responsibilities involved. The kitchen has a gas stove and a solar powered fridge. Water is all rainwater catchment. We also have a solar hot water heater for the shower. The grey water on the waterfront runs into a septic tank and grease traps and soak holes before filtering through the land. We use biodegradable and phosphate free products as much as possible.

We have an abundant bird life population here and many guests are delighted by the sites and sounds of them. The sea life is also abundant and we do try to encourage our local population to save turtles (they are a delicacy here unfortunately). We take people snorkeling where they can enjoy the underwater paradise nature has to offer. We are fairly well known in the savusavu community as Greenies and the fact that we do not spray for pests and herbicides. We speak about such things with our employees along with proper disposal of plastic bags and rubbish. My husband Andrew was chatting at the Bus stop at the end of our road one morning when a Fijian lady from another settlement near by arrived with a bag of rubbish and threw it in the water from the bridge. Much to her horror and the intrigue of the others waiting for the bus Andrew went to the bank and waded in gathering the rubbish which had burst from the bag, including disposable nappies, knotted the bag and put it on his bicycles handle bars, said to the lady, please don't throw your rubbish here, we all live right here. I don't think she will do that again. There is a feeling amongst some people in Fiji that the sea will take care of rubbish. We do our best to educate people when ever the opportunity arises.

We have a table in our house with a computer and a phone and this is our office. We are a small operation and we try to save paper and costs as much as possible. We always employ local people here. We give to local fund raising and buy what we can from local farmers. We do not import any thing and do all our shopping in Savusavu. The entire lodge has been built from local supplies and labour .A lot of the wood is from this property and much of the furniture is hand made here on the property. We have a guest information book with information on local restaurants, dive shops, hire cars, banking, post, and travel facilities available. We also list a lot of them on our web site. Most of our guests buy their food in town and cook it them selves. We have a Indian farmer who comes with his fresh vegetables and we also supply fresh fruit and vegetables from our own organic gardens free of charge to our guests. We also sell free range eggs from our own chickens which are fed food scraps, coconut, banana and papaya from the property and Mill mix which is bought in Savusavu.

Here at the lodge we have a Gilbertese community as our closest neighbours. They live a very simple life with out power or refrigeration. We have a fairly close nit community as our daughter has grown up with the children in our neighbourhood. We attend weddings, birthdays, and funerals and contribute to the church and the fund raisers.

We plan to set up a donation box for our guests and target the children in our immediate community. One idea was to give them some extra nourishment by way of banana smoothies on Sundays when they all go to Sunday school, about 30 to 40 children from small up to 16 and 17 year olds. Our daughter who is 15 is very keen to be involved with this project and she and her friends will serve. We plan to freeze the bananas we grow ourselves, in our energy efficient solar powered freezer, purchase the milk and the local honey. We will take our blender and a small inverter we have and make them at the church grounds powered from the car battery.

We will serve them in stainless cups which can be reused. When we get more money we would like to help some of the struggling families with several children with the school bus fares. We always pick up rubbish in our area and on land and often from the sea. Our last guest came back from kayaking with a coke bottle she found, which we disposed of in our land fill. We get a large hole dug for our rubbish by local boys on our own land. Compost is separated and is fed to our free range chickens. Bottles which can be recycled are put in a separate container and we take them to collectors in town. We encourage guests to visit the local community for a chat, they are very friendly. We offer to arrange village visits and church visits. We have several good reference books about Fiji for guests. We pay our staff above the basic wage and pay their Fiji National Provident Fund fees for them. We also contribute to Tpaf which is a government training and productivity levy of 1% on the wages paid. Our employees are all from our local community and usually walk home 5-10 minutes for their lunch break. We buy fresh vegetables from our local Indian farmers and from the market in Savusavu Town. We have a lot of our own fruit and vegetables here on the land which is organic, pesticide, and herbicide free.