Reducing plastic waste with reusable bottles

As of last month, we have stopped handing out and selling plastic water bottles at Elephant Hills. The Earth is filling up with tremendous amounts of plastic every day, and we wanted to take a step towards more sustainable resort operations. Needless to say, there is still a lot of work to be done in terms of reducing plastic waste, but we believe we are off to a good start.

The feedback from our visitors regards to this project has been amazing. It’s really uplifting to see how many people care and are willing to take action to conserve the environment. At Elephant Hills, we try to make this as easy as possible for our guests. Hence, we offer stainless steel straws for cocktails and other drinks. Furthermore, in tents, the drinking water comes in reusable and eventually recyclable glass bottles. Soap, shampoo and conditioner are provided in re-fillable ceramic dispensers.

How does it work with the reusable bottles?

The guests visiting Elephant Hills are welcome to bring their own reusable water bottles on all our tours. However, we do realize that not all visitors own a reusable bottle, or perhaps don’t find it convenient to travel with. Whatever the case may be, upon check-in, our guides hand out stainless steel bottles, which can be used throughout the guests’ stay.

Guests heading to wash the elephants, bringing the stainless steel bottles along

Those visitors who would like to keep the bottle at the end of the tour, can purchase it for 250 THB upon check-out. The bottles that are returned, will re-enter the cycle, and continue to be reused. They will be thoroughly washed and prepared to be handed out for the next group of guests. All tour locations, as well as both The Elephant Camp in the mainland and Rainforest Camp, floating on Cheow Larn Lake have plenty of fill-up stations for clean drinking water.

Complimentary fill-up stations are available in both camps and all tour locations

This service is provided completely free of charge for our visitors. As a result of this switch, we can reduce our plastic waste by thousands of bottles each year. We hope, that this initiative could also help to spread awareness and encourage our visitors and staff, possibly even other tourism companies to consider how they could lower their impact on the environment. We believe that little by little, plenty of small daily actions can make a big difference!

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