Food management and water management initiatives

While a lot is happening around us for environment, it is time we all change for good and do our bit to save the environment. Environmental sustainability is the responsibility to conserve natural resources and protect global ecosystems to support health and wellbeing, now and in the future. As we begin to experience the long-term consequences of exponential industry growth and energy use, we must act to reverse these effects and prevent further damage, ensuring we have healthy places to live for generations to come. For businesses, it means committing to environmentally sustainable practices to help build thriving communities and secure future growth potential.

Listed below few major initiatives and sustainable eco practices taken by various properties of Niraamaya Wellness Retreats.

Food Services

· Tea/coffee is prepared by “Fresh Cow milk” using cow dung as manure

· Using only “Homemade Jam’ and Homemade Pickle, avoiding plastic waste.

· Cocktails and Mocktails purpose we are using “Fresh Juice”, avoiding tetra packs and plastic

· We are using only “Paper straw’ instead of plastic straws

· We are working on converting food waste in to compost and it will be commenced soon.

· We have vegetable & herbal garden for guest visit where in garden is maintained by kitchen team & wellness team respectively. We take utmost pride in making guest visit our organic garden.

Our retreats idea of local food is keeping more healthy food as a part of wellbeing initiative. We produce our own vegetables at our organic garden and only source local indigenous items which are not produced by us. The menu made itself based on locally sourced ingredients. Customers are much satisfied and people who are looking for this new organic/slow food people are more appreciative.

Water Conservation Practice – We live by it

The frames of environment have opened their doors to a new hopeful scenario here at Niraamaya Kumarakom – Best Water Conservation practices. Various measures have been adopted to fulfil the ideas of conserving ground water, rainwater and water from other natural resources. The Niraamaya Retreats, Kumarakom property situated along the banks of Vembanad lake preseves its water from overflowing into the lake by having man – made harvesting pits connected by rain gutters.

Rain harvesting structures created

Kerala is one of the most favourable states in the country for receiving good amount of rainfall. Considering this fact in mind, we have created various rain harvesting structures. The following are the constructions and their details upon which how they serve the purpose.

· Rainwater swails are installed to route and collect the precipitation in the water storage tank with a capacity of 2 lakh litres. This water is being utilized for operational purposes after necessary filtration processes.

· A 260 feet deep recharge pit is bored at the site for routing rainwater through roof gutters installed for the purpose.

· Three rainwater ponds are developed at the site to act as a mode of recharging the ground water table.

· Fish farming (pearlspot, tilapia) done in the rainwater pond.

Efforts made for spreading water conservation awareness

Awareness classes are the steppingstones or basics through which a novel idea could be spread into a mass population which is why here at Niraamaya Kumarakom, weekly awareness classes on water conservation are conducted by the responsible people in the managerial cadre of the organization to inject innovative notions into people which has farfetched power of creating a sense of ownership that is one of the basic doctrines of the company. Apart from the awareness classes, the team takes inventiveness to pay home visits to the native people to evaluate the progress of the resourcefulness of how much they have imbibed from the orientation classes and how much establishment has been done to envisage its accomplishment. Necessary assistance is given to fasten the progress of the construction of rainwater storage units and help in the maintenance of already one.

Efforts made for cleaning water bodies and water conservation

· Water bodies form the most essential part of the eco system. Niraamaya Kumarakom rightly situates on the banks of Lake Vembanad, which is the longest lake in India and the largest one in the state of Kerala. The organization shows an extra care and sense of ownership to preserve the Vembanad wetland system which is the largest wetland system in India. Every week, the team from the organization takes boats to row about in the Lake to remove the floating bottles and debris which is a petite but novel contribution to make the Lake cleaner.

· We are using water from the well for drinking, the same is used only after the filtration (WTP). We have also installed UV and RO processing and after this process, wastewater is used for gardening. Swimming pool and fountain wastewater is also used for the gardening.

· All our guest bathrooms are open to sky there are very good natural light.

· All taps in the premises are equipped with aerators

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