Vineyard Hotel & Spa introduces ‘green’ coffee on menu
27. Oct, 2008
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Cape Town – The deluxe Vineyard Hotel & Spa has changed its coffee to the Fairtrade brand – Puro, furthering the hotel’s commitment to taking action in reducing the environmental impact of the hotel and spa.
Puro and Puro Organic Coffee are the Fairtrade brands of Miko Coffee – a Belgian coffee roaster since 1801, who now has distribution centres across Europe, Australasia and Africa. Customers purchasing a Fairtrade product have peace of mind that their money will not be used to further exploit third world communities.
Fairtrade is a global strategy for poverty alleviation and sustainable development in these communities. Its purpose is to create opportunities for producers and workers who have been economically disadvantaged or marginalized by the conventional trading system.
In addition to the Fairtrade commitment the Puro brand contributes a further 2% of its turnover to the World Land Trust who actively buys and protects rainforests in South America on our behalf. Puro is the only Fairtrade coffee brand that works with the World Land Trust and so far Puro has saved 1 660 acres of rainforest (or roughly 2 000 football fields). By January this year 33 new species of orchid had been discovered in the Buenaventura Reserve. The Company has placed a webcam in the reserve and to view the hummingbirds below the webcam go to www.wildlifefocus.org/webcam/index.shtml
In South Africa, Puro has gone one step further and are in the process of launching a local initiative known as Trees for Schools in conjunction with our customers, the Kruger to Canyon Biosphere and the Sustainable Living project in Hoedspruit.
Puro Fairtrade beans are sourced from Guatemala and the Congo and Puro Organic beans originate from Peru. Puro has chosen Peru to be the site for its next rainforest reserve.
For all these reasons and the fact that the coffee is delicious, the Vineyard Hotel & Spa has chosen Puro as their preferred coffee supplier.
Other environmental initiatives at the Vineyard Hotel & Spa include:
- Indigenous gardens – the hotel’s drive has been to keep the garden as indigenous as possible and in the last four (4) years the garden team has been actively working towards this goal. All new planting is indigenous and only organic compost is used. No harmful chemicals are used in the garden.
- Water conservation – under constant threat of drought in the Western Cape, the Vineyard Hotel & Spa has made every effort to conserve water and has already implemented many water saving practices from using borehole water in the garden to aerated taps, water saving showerheads and drip irrigation.
- Energy conservation – the hotel has focused its energy saving campaign on the use of energy saving light bulbs where possible in the hotel and the installation of hot water pipes and heat pumps.
- Silvermine Project – The hotel’s first environmental community program called Adopt a Plot where they have adopted a 8.5 hectare plot in the Sillvermine section of the Table Mountain National Park to cut down alien vegetation.
- Recycling & waste management – The hotel employ’s a company called Saveall who sorts out all the refuse and recycles all the reusable items including paper, cardboard, glass, plastic and tins. The hotel also returns its old cooking oil for the manufacture of biodiesel.
My name is Muzi Mohale a full-time travel blogger, your host at Travelwires.com responsible for all editorial on this blog. I blog about the travel and tourism industry in Africa. Apart from blogging about tourism, I also run 
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