Angsana Bintan

As a socially responsible business, Banyan Tree was founded with the core value of driving sustainable development. With the call to arms of embracing the environment and empowering the people, we seek to continue being an agent of social and economic development through responsible tourism. Our triple bottom line (economy, society and environment) help direct our sustainable development by inspiring associates, guests, and partners to take a wider consideration encompassing a long term view when making business decisions.

Environment
Since its founding, Banyan Tree has sought to protect the natural environment. The importance of safeguarding the environment is central within our goal of sharing the original beauty of any location with guests and friends. This includes ensuring each resort fits into the local setting in a sensitive, meaningful manner.

Banyan Tree and Angsana Bintan resorts provide their recyclables at a very minimal sum to a local village entrepreneur who then takes those items to the recycling centre, earning a significant profit. Any funds the resort collects through this are earmarked to invest back into that very same community for various health, education, and capacity building efforts.

In 2007, Banyan Tree launched a group wide effort to monitor and systematically reduce the carbon emissions from its resorts. While much of this effort was more internally focused to fine tune and enhance the overall environmental management strategy, this effort has lead to a programme launching in 2008 to reduce energy and water consumption by each resort while enhancing waste management practices at each location. The overall goal is to reduce consumption and carbon emissions by 10% every year from 2006 levels between 2008 and 2010.

Formalised in the last part of 2007, the group environmental management strategy requires each resort to have environmental management officers specifically to monitor power consumption, water consumption and waste production and reduce consumption by at least 10% every year.

Banyan Tree increased its commitment to tackle the issues of climate change by launching Greening Communities in 2007. Banyan Tree’s group wide environmental initiative targeting climate change, Greening Communities challenges our resorts to plant 2,000 new trees per year for the next 10 years. While the initiative will offset a small amount of the globally produced atmospheric carbon dioxide, the main goal is to drive greater awareness of climate change among our communities, associates, and guests.

We started with 7 initial locations in Thailand (Phuket and Bangkok), Indonesia (Bintan), Maldives, Seychelles, China (Lijiang), and Australia (Cairns) in 2007 and will continue ramping up in the coming years. Resorts were tasked to plant non invasive species on protected locations such as schools or parks where any newly planted trees have a significantly high likelihood of long term longevity. At Bintan we planted a mixture of 2000 Sea Almond, Durian, Cashew, Rambutan, Mahoni, Mango, Eugenia Rolyana, and Angsana trees in local schools and villages between April and December 2007.

Launched in February 2007, the Banyan Tree Bintan Conservation Lab was our first research facility catering to terrestrial conservation in Asia, in addition to its focus on marine conservation. Our Conservation Lab seeks to raise international awareness of the importance of Indonesia’s biodiversity, which is at risk due to unsustainable development practices causing habitat destruction. By focusing on three main aspects of research, education and outreach, we can host visiting scientists and other experts to research as well as implement strategies to promote ecologically sustainable social and economic development.

As a result of the surveys and partnerships, experts have discovered 60 species of birds in the resort, of which 15 were listed as protected species; while 40 species of reptiles and amphibians were identified in resort and surrounding area, including two freshwater turtle species listed as vulnerable and endangered by the World Conservation Union (IUCN). Research is ongoing, and further projects and partnerships are being developed to enhance the ability of the resorts to protect and promote the local ecology.

Community
With the mandate of empowering people, Banyan Tree is quick to recognise the necessity of building community capacity, in every location that we are in. As an agent of social and economic development, we realise the potential of tourism to hire from the local workforce, giving training and marketable skills to raise the overall level of community prosperity.

Sustaining village development, preserving and promoting traditional cultures and crafts are part of Banyan Tree Gallery’s business ethos as a socially responsible tourism retailer. Committed to showcasing and supporting community-friendly and eco-friendly products and projects, we have cultivated a wide network of over 40 village producers and project partners around the region.

In the summer of 2007, the Bintan Conservation Lab welcomed experts from the National University of Singapore’s Medical School to conduct free screenings and awareness sessions of mosquito borne diseases such as Dengue and Malaria, for local communities.