World beating, inefficient, renewable energy munching machines (eles doing their bit)
Up here in the sweltering North, as the Easter rush drops off around us and we look at the long entrance ramp to the high season and put together our usual raft of 'wet season projects' most of which never actually get done because, well, guests or no guests, we're always pretty busy just looking after elephants and getting everyone's holiday out the way.
A lot of talk at the hotel level is about 'going green' and a lot of those conversations look at me and say, 'well, of course elephants are already green'.
The hotel is already advanced along the green curve and has been for years, since it was just called common sense to sell all your old, reusable waste; to clog your printer with upside down paper and give the double sided stuff to the monks (often giving away financial secrets to any bored bonze who cares to read); to grow your own kitchen herbs and flowers; to compost your garden waste - stuff that pretty much every household around here does in order to save/make money. We may not have a fancy PowerPoint presentation like other folks (usually folks to whom the whole concept is a revelation) or lovely colour coded bins but the hotel's been walking the walk since way before there was a walk to be walked.
One thing, however, we're not very good at yet is resource conservation, there's a great tendency amongst our folks to believe that energy grows on trees (a poor analogy as the trees disappeared 10 - 20 years ago) possibly because it is so cheap in the villages as to not be true and that water drops out of the sky; on top of that, a universal fear of ghosts, spirits and the like means even the toughest tattooed mahout likes a good floodlight even on a reasonably dull day - just in case....
...and then there's the global belief that if our rich employer is paying for it, then why should we worry about conserving that most global of resources: money. (I once caught one member of nameless staff on a nameless continent faxing a document across the office because she couldn't be bothered to get up and carry it).
So we do love our three litre turbo-intercooled, air-conditioned, cup-holder equipped, stereo-mega-blaster saturated Toyotas and Isuzus (though even mine is taking a back seat to the 125 Kawasaki at the moment - difficult but not impossible to avoid spilling your coffee & dropping your computer on the dirt track to the elephant camp, but worth it for the lower fuel consumption) particularly if someone else is paying to fill the tank.
Then, here in the elephant camp, we now have eight machines, expensively (albeit renewably sourced) carbon fueled and ready to go on a daily basis and - unlike our vehicles - you've still got to keep 'em full and they still expel greenhouse inducing methane whether or not you use them - indeed the less you use them, the more fuel they consume (bit like me on holiday) and the more difficult it is for the renewable resource to renew in between trunk attacks.
So how to use our renewably fueled, CH4 producing whether they work or not, vehicles to reduce the use of our non-renewably fueled vehicles that don't emit a thing when sulking in the car park?
The first idea is to use them for the biweekly store runs up the hill...
...yesterday was the turn of the bar store, the major query of the bar staff was whether the mahouts would know how to transport whisky without breaking it. Believe me, if there's one thing they know how to transport....
...I was more worried about the famous and traditional one-for-you-one-for-me tax on the transportation of alcohol by elephant...
...but when the time came we turned the right way and headed up the hill.
Eles proving they are part of the hotel team and employed in going green as well as justifying their costs - of course everyone thinks were crazy for doing this but you get used to that after a while in my job.
You'll see, one day, you'll see!
A lot of talk at the hotel level is about 'going green' and a lot of those conversations look at me and say, 'well, of course elephants are already green'.
The hotel is already advanced along the green curve and has been for years, since it was just called common sense to sell all your old, reusable waste; to clog your printer with upside down paper and give the double sided stuff to the monks (often giving away financial secrets to any bored bonze who cares to read); to grow your own kitchen herbs and flowers; to compost your garden waste - stuff that pretty much every household around here does in order to save/make money. We may not have a fancy PowerPoint presentation like other folks (usually folks to whom the whole concept is a revelation) or lovely colour coded bins but the hotel's been walking the walk since way before there was a walk to be walked.
One thing, however, we're not very good at yet is resource conservation, there's a great tendency amongst our folks to believe that energy grows on trees (a poor analogy as the trees disappeared 10 - 20 years ago) possibly because it is so cheap in the villages as to not be true and that water drops out of the sky; on top of that, a universal fear of ghosts, spirits and the like means even the toughest tattooed mahout likes a good floodlight even on a reasonably dull day - just in case....
...and then there's the global belief that if our rich employer is paying for it, then why should we worry about conserving that most global of resources: money. (I once caught one member of nameless staff on a nameless continent faxing a document across the office because she couldn't be bothered to get up and carry it).
So we do love our three litre turbo-intercooled, air-conditioned, cup-holder equipped, stereo-mega-blaster saturated Toyotas and Isuzus (though even mine is taking a back seat to the 125 Kawasaki at the moment - difficult but not impossible to avoid spilling your coffee & dropping your computer on the dirt track to the elephant camp, but worth it for the lower fuel consumption) particularly if someone else is paying to fill the tank.
Then, here in the elephant camp, we now have eight machines, expensively (albeit renewably sourced) carbon fueled and ready to go on a daily basis and - unlike our vehicles - you've still got to keep 'em full and they still expel greenhouse inducing methane whether or not you use them - indeed the less you use them, the more fuel they consume (bit like me on holiday) and the more difficult it is for the renewable resource to renew in between trunk attacks.
So how to use our renewably fueled, CH4 producing whether they work or not, vehicles to reduce the use of our non-renewably fueled vehicles that don't emit a thing when sulking in the car park?
The first idea is to use them for the biweekly store runs up the hill...
...yesterday was the turn of the bar store, the major query of the bar staff was whether the mahouts would know how to transport whisky without breaking it. Believe me, if there's one thing they know how to transport....
...I was more worried about the famous and traditional one-for-you-one-for-me tax on the transportation of alcohol by elephant...
...but when the time came we turned the right way and headed up the hill.
Eles proving they are part of the hotel team and employed in going green as well as justifying their costs - of course everyone thinks were crazy for doing this but you get used to that after a while in my job.
You'll see, one day, you'll see!
Comments