The Low Carbon School project was an initiative sponsored by the local municipality with the support of the Thai Hotels Association. As Koh Samui is a small island, the island’s resources are limited. The local government decided to initiate a program to educate the local population about proper care for the environment.
Each of the resorts on the island have chosen a school to sponsor. Our gardening team spend hours with the local schoolchildren teaching them how to grow their own herbs and vegetables, how to recycle garbage into useful products, and how to take care of the environment. The project has been enormously successful and has benefited the local community tremendously. Our school now has a thriving nursery with herbs, plants and vegetables, the food scraps and leftovers are recycled into compost for the garden, and the environmental impact of the school has been greatly improved.
Rocky’s also maintains our own nursery where we grow basil, chili, lemongrass, mint, papaya, bananas and many other types of local produce, which is used in our restaurants and for our staff meals. Our garden team take the leftover fruit and vegetable cuttings from the kitchen to produce ‘EM’ or Effective Microorganisms, which is a completely natural biological agent perfect for fertilizing plants, reducing smells in gutters and drains, amongst many other uses. We also use all of the plant cuttings from the resort to make compost which is then used in the gardens and in our nusery.
Our gardens and nusery demand a lot of water, which is why we have made it a point to set up a water recycling system at Rocky’s. We collect the majority of our waste water at the hotel and process it via natural means until the water is clean enough to be used to water our nursery. This greatly reduces our water demand and ensures that we keep our local environment clean.
Rocky’s also donates all leftover meat, bread and rice to the local Samui Dog Rescue, a non-profit organization set up to take care of stray dogs on Koh Samui. Through the tireless efforts of these volunteers, local dogs get fed, bathed and the medical attention they need.
Our staff regularly participate in local beach cleaning activities to maintain the beauty of the local beaches. We send our staff volunteers to various beaches around the island to remove any built up seaweed that has washed on to the shore.
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