This week’s travel dream: A resort that says no to Perrier

Soneva Fushi is definitely an “oh wow” destination, said Bob Payne in Condé Nast Traveler. How else to describe a resort occupying an entire island in the Maldives and featuring villas that have private pools—some with palm trees at the centers? But the wow factor is not the primary reason Soneva Fushi is special. The uniqueness of the place first comes to light when I order Perrier from the private butler who’s assigned to my room and he politely declines my request. The only bottled water available, I learn, is produced by the resort, “which converts seawater into fresh and then bottles it, still or sparkling, in reusable glass bottles.” And why? Because the process eliminates the CO2 emissions that would be produced by shipping in 55,000 bottles a year.

That’s just one way that the resort is seeking to demonstrate that “luxury tourism is not synonymous with overindulgent waste.” Its Bangkok-based parent company, Six Senses Resorts & Spas, is aiming by 2012 to achieve something at Soneva Fushi that no other luxury hotel group has done: have it absorb more carbon than it emits. Clearly, that won’t be easy. Just 3 percent of the resort’s electricity needs are currently met by solar power, and an expensive upgrade will push that number to only 60 percent. It was hoped that air-conditioning could be provided via a deep-sea pipeline, but area waters aren’t cold enough. “Is this whole carbon-neutral project just the pipe dream” of Sonu Shivdasani, the CEO of Six Senses?

Thoughts about carbon emissions linger as I snorkel above a reef teeming with colorful fish and as I later “set the record for how quickly one can fall asleep on a massage table.” Over a candlelit dinner that features local seafood and greens from the resort’s gardens, someone mentions that this very island could be one of the first to go if sea levels rise. It’s then that I begin to appreciate that Six Senses can’t be faulted for doing all it can, against long odds, to “do right by the environment.” I’d even propose that “the genius of people like Shivdasani is an optimism that admits to no problem’s being unsolvable.”

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Villas at Soneva Fushi (sixsenses.com/soneva) start at $590 a night.