Environmental Policy

Environmental Action Plan

Version: 3.0
Adopted: October 2026
Next review: October 2027

Our approach

Looking After Our Own Footprint

We spend our days protecting reefs and mangroves, so we owe it to them to keep a close eye on our own impact.

Our Environmental Action Plan covers how we run our campus and how we carry out our conservation, research, training and volunteer work: the resources we use, the waste and wastewater we produce, our effect on habitats, and the environmental claims we publish. It applies to staff, volunteers and interns alike.

Throughout, we keep three things apart: what we already do, what we're working on, and what we've actually measured. Where a figure is an estimate, we say so. This third edition builds on the plan first drawn up at a staff and volunteer workshop in 2017, led by environmental consultant Amy Slack.

Everyday practice

What We Already Do

Vegetarian by Default

Our kitchen serves vegetarian meals as standard. Chicken or pork is cooked on Saturdays for those who ask for it, plus the odd holiday dinner. We never serve beef or lamb, and the kitchen doesn't serve seafood. The only seafood volunteers are likely to eat with us is at a community event once or twice a year.

Leftovers go to our pigs and chickens, so no food ends up in the bin. Our hens keep us in eggs for most of the year, we grow bananas, passion fruit, mangoes, pineapples and mulberries, and most of what we buy is local produce. More about our kitchen and food.

In 2020 we launched Veggioke, a vegetarian recipe site promoted through Google Ad Grants, which has since reached more than a million visitors.

Building and Buying

Bamboo grown on our own land supplies building material. When we buy, we favour durable, repairable equipment and keep things in use for as long as they're safe. We choose refills, returnable packaging and sensibly sized bulk buys over excess stock.

Our liability and sign-up forms are completed online, which saves a stack of paper for every new arrival.

Waste on Base

We sort our campus waste, and roughly half of it by weight is recycled. The rest goes to a sanitary landfill. That figure is an estimate, and confirming exactly where each waste stream ends up is part of this year's plan.

Clean-Ups, Counted Separately

Our Pro Ocean team has collected more than 427,000 kg of marine litter since 2020, and about 40% of it by weight is recycled. That's litter removed from beaches, mangroves and reefs, not waste we produce, so we keep it out of our own waste figures. Read more about combating ocean plastics.

Water and Wastewater

In 2021 we drilled our own well to 61 metres to make our water supply more reliable. We protect it from contamination, fix leaks quickly and avoid needless use, and we're working out the best way to measure what we use.

Wastewater is handled on site, and this year we're mapping and reviewing the whole system.

On the Reef

Our diving follows Green Fins guidance, in training and on every dive. Underwater, we don't touch the reef, apart from removing litter and ghost nets.

We recommend full-length wetsuits, which also means less sunscreen in the water.

Travel

Getting Here

Flying here has a real carbon cost, and we won't pretend otherwise.

What your stay supports is real too. The 31,000 mangroves our volunteers have funded and planted wouldn't exist without them, and on base you'll eat mostly vegetarian, mostly local food. We're working out the numbers on both sides and will publish them together, so you can judge for yourself.

Most of that planting happened before 2020, and good planting sites have become hard to find. We're now looking for abandoned fish ponds to turn back into mangrove forest. Read more about our mangrove work.

If you're flying here

Stay longer if you can. One return flight then covers more weeks of conservation work.
Fly economy. A seat in a premium cabin takes up more of the plane, and a bigger share of its emissions.
Fly direct where possible. Extra legs usually add distance and another take-off.

Year one

What We're Working On

The first year of this plan is about getting reliable baselines and finishing the improvements we can. We'll set percentage-reduction targets once we know our starting point and how best to measure it.

Late 2026 or early 2027

Solar Power

Our grid electricity is partly geothermal, alongside other sources. We're installing 67 solar panels on one of our roofs, 33.5 kWp in total. Much of our heaviest demand, from dive compressors to office air conditioning, falls in daylight, so most of what the panels produce should be used on site. We'll then apply for net metering, so any surplus goes back to the grid, and publish the measured reduction once the system is running.

By January 2027

Baselines and Reviews

We'll gather our electricity, fuel and water records, along with occupancy, so that later comparisons are fair. We'll confirm where every waste stream goes, including anything a recycler turns away. And we'll map our drainage and septic system, and fix anything that needs it.

By April 2027

Travel Footprint

A first estimate of staff and volunteer travel emissions, with our method and assumptions published alongside it.

By October 2027

Mangrove Carbon

Working with project partners, we'll go through our planting maps, dates and monitoring records, and decide whether a credible carbon estimate is possible.

October 2027

First Public Update

Our first annual report on this plan. Until then, we check progress every quarter, and any urgent pollution problem we find is dealt with straight away.

Each annual update will cover energy, water, wastewater, waste destinations, food, travel and progress on this plan, with the period, method and limits of every figure. Clean-up litter and mangrove carbon will always be reported separately from our own footprint, and this page and the downloadable plan will be updated together.

Questions About Our Footprint?

If you'd like more detail on anything in this plan, or have ideas that could help us improve it, we'd love to hear from you.