Matemwe Retreat Sustainability Actions

We foster ethics in line with Eco Policies of high standard, Fair Trade of all local procurement (foodstuff, furniture, fittings, building material, guest effects, curios, etc.), Waste Management (collect, separate, cover, contain and control), Energy saving practices, avoiding any possible Pollution, Safety & Welfare for our staff & guests, as well as Reduction of our carbon footprint. The implementation of these projects will make a great impact in this environment.

All our hot water heaters are solar systems already.

Furthermore, we are at this point in time investing 105,000.00US$ into a sewage treatment plant (including the necessary new waste water network), as well as a water treatment plant (filtration of water) to reuse all our water from the property. A rubbish separation set-up will be constructed during the coming weeks. In addition, huge efforts from our side result in better waste management; this includes the villages surrounding our property. We are working closely with a foundation (The Honeyguide Foundation: www.honeyguide.org) and the Tourism Investors Association (ZATI) to speed up environmental friendly procedures & structures. We are also tapping into knowhow & findings originating from researches conducted by a team from the University of Turku, Department of Geography of Finland.

We are facing challenges to achieve fruitful results from our philosophy and codex commitment to sustainably maintain the environment, as well as the integrity of the community (their habitat): The decrease of the demand of resources (especially fossil fuels) proves to be a huge hurdle to overcome, especially without the implementation of alternatives such as solar energy. A material turn-around would be the installation of a photovoltaic solar system, which supplies electricity. A PV Solar system would reduce operating costs, hence funds would become available to widen and strengthen our projects such as education, environmental awareness & activities, medical support and employment (sustainable local empowerment). Therefore, a strong research has been conducted and intensive work has been started to achieve the aim to supply electricity through solar energy. If all goes well, we will have the first PV systems installed during 2010 already.