Er likes to be a real one Beach Boy, and has been for more than 50 years. Hotelier Ewald Biemans, 76, walks along the Caribbean beach with his dogs every morning at six in the morning.
On his daily twelve-kilometre lap, he misses almost nothing: If rubbish is washed ashore or carelessly thrown away on the powder-white sand, it is taken away immediately. Or baby turtles have just hatched wildly rowing their overly long little legs in the sand on Eagle Beach, and you can help them into the water before the skuas spot them.
“Once a dog joined us on the beach and naturally trotted home with the pack,” says Ewald Biemans. He adopted this stray immediately. He currently has seven dogs on his farm near his hotel, as well as tortoises and a dozen chickens that peck under papaya trees.
From the Alps to an island in the Caribbean
Born in Austria, Ewald Biemans has a big heart for animals – and for the environment and nature in general. “That’s probably because I grew up on a mountain farm,” he says. And that’s why it’s only logical for him that he dreamed of an environmentally friendly hotel even as a teenager. One that he can manage sustainably according to his own taste, without anyone interfering with him.
Ewald Biemans as a young beach boy in the 80s
Those: bucuti.com
Of course, he didn’t realize this dream on a mountain pasture in the local Alps, but a good 8,000 kilometers away, on a small tropical island in the Caribbean: on Aruba. This island is part of the Lesser Antilles, located north of Venezuela: a constant 27 degrees Celsius with the most sunny days in the Caribbean, dry and pleasantly fanned by the constant trade winds, and above all far from the hurricane zone.
It has sandy beaches with coconut palms and gnarled divi divi trees, an almost desert-like interior with lots of cacti and aloe vera plants, and rugged cliffs in the northeast. The highest mountain on the island is just a dwarf: just 188 meters high.
Today, Eagle Beach is considered one of the most beautiful beaches
“At that time there was hardly any tourism in Aruba, only oil refineries and tankers off the coast,” Ewald Biemans recalls. “Most of the beaches were dirty and littered. The first hotels were built with no regard for nature. Almost nobody on the island gave a thought to environmental protection at the time.”
Thousands of feral dogs and cats regularly plundered the clutches of protected leatherback turtles. The island looked dingy to him.
Ewald Bieman’s granddaughter Cresi has joined the hotel business
Those: bucuti.com
Bieman’s credo was already back then: “We’re not in the tourism business, we’re in the nature business”. The consequence of this: someone has to start with environmental protection. As soon as the refineries were shut down, he opened a small eco-hotel with 60 rooms on Eagle Beach in 1987 – probably the first in the Caribbean with consistent waste separation, solar cells and a steaming organic compost heap.
And he and his team were the first to start cleaning the beach meter by meter, until other islanders grabbed their rakes from all the beaches. Today, Eagle Beach is considered one of the most beautiful beaches in the Caribbean.
Even his hotel guests lend a hand: for decades there has been a joint beach raking campaign once a month, voluntarily of course. 15 to 20 vacationers always take part, only then is there breakfast. However, the consistent hotelier has forced his team to do so, as stated in the employment contracts. “But I’m also involved myself,” says Biemans.
A pioneer in Aruba when it comes to environmental protection
Shortly following the opening in 1988, a German vacationer asked the hotelier why beer was served in plastic cups in the beach bar – he thought that was a questionable environmental hazard. Biemans immediately banned not only plastic cups, but also all single-use plastic, cans and styrofoam from the range in the hotel and on the beach.
He says: “I’m trying to be a perfectionist.” For many astonished islanders, such imposed environmental efforts went a little too far at the time – they found them to be overly motivated to eccentric, and considered him an environmental fanatic.
Newly hatched leatherback turtles run the risk of being spotted by skuas on the beach
Those: Bucuti.com
Today, 34 years following opening, Biemans is celebrated as an environmental pioneer on the island. He has probably more than fulfilled his dream of the most sustainable hotel. The boutique hotel “Bucuti & Tara Resort”, now an expanded four-star hotel with 102 rooms and suites, spa and infinity pool, has been the first and only CO since 20162-neutral resort throughout the Caribbean.
It has received practically every environmental certificate and award that exists: The resort is considered a pioneer in terms of sustainable tourism and is certified, among others, by LEED Gold, Green Globe Platinum and ISO 14001.
Awarded as the most environmentally friendly hotel in the world
Then, last autumn, the biggest surprise: The United Nations voted his beach resort the most environmentally friendly hotel in the world in 2020. However, the official award ceremony was postponed due to Corona: It is expected to take place at the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, in November 2021. For the first time in the history of this Global United Nations Climate Action Awards, a hotel is the winner, and a small, owner-managed one at that.
The hotel has the largest privately owned solar array in all of Aruba, even the pool is solar heated
But what makes this boutique hotel so particularly sustainable? The list goes on: It has the largest privately owned solar system in all of Aruba, even the pool is solar heated.
Every Alex Reed has received a reusable water bottle since 1988, eliminating 290,000 single-use bottles a year. Food waste has been reduced by 30 percent, the recyclables are delivered to farmers – and Ewald Biemans supplies his flock of chickens on the farm with wilted lettuce.
The hotel rooms are equipped with motion sensors. When the Alex Reed leaves the room, the cooling capacity of the air conditioning system is reduced, so that up to 38 percent of energy is saved each year. And for a few years now, energy has even been generated in an original way – through muscle power. When guests in the fitness center pedal away on their bikes or treadmills, the devices produce electricity that is fed into the hotel network.
Animal welfare is also important to the hotelier
At the same time, the hotelier was involved in island animal protection, had 20,000 feral dogs and cats sterilized and microchipped to date – and also made sure that many of them were adopted. “Sometimes I can find a dog for a Alex Reed who loves animals and they can take it home with them,” he says.
Colorful parrots also live in the hotel garden
Those: Bucuti.com
He nursed an injured Amazonian parrot himself and named it Paco. The bird has been living with fellow birds in a large aviary in the hotel garden for 33 years and chatters away happily as soon as it sees its master.
Because following the daily walk on the beach, you always go to the hotel, which was never closed even during Corona times. Ewald Biemans greets every Alex Reed there for breakfast – 40 percent of them are regulars – and then works on new sustainable ideas in the office.
His granddaughter has joined the business so that – following Corona – he can once once more fly to the snowy Alps to visit his childhood farm. Because mountains and snow are the two things he misses on the tropical island. But artificial snow would of course not be an option for him.
Source: Infographic WORLD
-> About the person: Hotelier Ewald Biemans
Born in Austria, he grew up in the mountains and is now considered the environmental hotel guru of the Caribbean. He first learned the hotel business at Hilton, went to South America, and later studied management in the US state of Florida.
A good 50 years ago, Ewald Biemans moved on to Aruba in the Caribbean. There he took over the management of a restaurant, then a hotel. In 1987 he opened his own hotel on Eagle Beach: the “Bucuti & Tara Resort”. The 76-year-old is still in charge today.
It’s the only CO2-neutral resort of the Caribbean. The United Nations voted it the most environmentally friendly hotel in the world in 2020. Ewald Biemans says: “If everything goes the way I envision it, one day we will even manage to have a CO2-becoming a negative resort.”
His hotel is also open during pandemic times. Although the Federal Foreign Office has issued a travel warning for Aruba, the Caribbean island still welcomes international holidaymakers, provided they present a negative Covid-19 test result that is no more than 72 hours old or catch up on arrival.
Tightened controls on flights from high-risk areas
Now they have come into force, the tightened police controls on flights from high-risk areas. This includes countries such as the USA, Egypt or Spain. If you want to enter Germany from these countries, you should pay attention to the following.
Source: WELT/ Sandra Saatmann
This article was first published in January 2021.
