Making your villa vacation more environmentally sound...
Renting a vacation villa is a great way to enjoy your holiday, with plenty of space to relax and enjoy good times with your family and friends. Some features that are normal in villas, however, can be very different from your own home, so how do you carry on with the sound environmental policies that you have at home while you are on vacation?
It certainly needn’t be a burden to your holiday, so here are some simple tips to helping have a responsible holiday:
Windows and Doors
Please do not leave windows and doors open as this will result in you trying to air-condition Florida! The minimum temperature to set the air-conditioning unit to is usually advised by your villa owner, setting it below this could actually cause expensive mechanical damage. The ceiling fans will also help circulate the air, but their use will also increase the energy used.
If you are out during the day then it can make a difference to the amount of energy used by changing the AC temperature on the thermostat. For example if you find 74 oF comfortable then just before you go out change the temperature to 80 oF and re-set it to 74 oF when you come back in. The AC will quickly cool the house back down and it will still be comfortable until it reaches that temperature as the humidity is kept down throughout the day.
Water
To help minimise water usage please make sure that taps aren’t left running unnecessarily, for example don’t leave the tap running while you brush your teeth.
Please do not alter any of the settings of the sprinkler system or the swimming pool and if you feel they may need altered then please contact the villa management company. If your pool has a blanket and you are using pool heating then the blanket can make a tremendous difference to how effective the heating is so please use it. You may need to watch that the water level of the swimming pool is correct, so that it drains effectively into the outlet. This will make sure that the pool systems are running as efficiently as possible.
If you also buy a large bottle of drinking water to have in your fridge remember that these can be refilled at many of the supermarkets, meaning that you don’t need to get another bottle. It is also better to have a large bottle for several uses in the villa, rather than having several small bottles.
Recycling
Your villa may come with a box for kerbside recycling and it is amazing just how much can be recycled. There are, however some concerns about the recycling boxes for the villas especially for management companies. The main concern is that along with the trash left by guests at the end of their stay there could also be a considerable amount of recycling left (especially when guests are trying to minimise packing by disposing of packaging from purchases during their holiday). It would be unfeasible for them or the cleaners to have to remove excessive amounts of trash and they may actually charge for this. They obviously have to remove all of the trash and recycling between guests as no one would like to arrive at a villa that still had trash in it. So what do you do? Recycle as much as possible during your stay and then after the last recycling collection use the trash as normal.
Carrier/Grocery bags
Many of the supermarkets have recycling bins for carrier bags and as the supermarkets seem to use a lot of carrier bags when packing your shopping it is best to try to both re-use the carrier bags and also put them in for recycling.