Sonu Shivdasani launches The Water Campaign
Published
31st Jul 2012
In a bid to address the world’s water crisis, Sonu Shivdansi will launch The Water Campaign in September.
The campaign is a global initiative for the tourism and hospitality industry, which will ask participating hotels, spas and resorts to bottle and sell their own filtered tap water.
Shivdansi, founder of the Six Senses Resorts and Spas and chairman of Soneva Fushi Resorts, realised that something needed to change after looking at the statistics where almost one billion people in the world do not have access to clean water.
Last year, Shivdansi embarked on The Water Campaign following the success of his own scheme at the Soneva Fushi Resort in the Maldives. The resort banned imported bottled water and changed over to triple-filtered tap water. The water is then bottled on-site in glass-recycled bottles, with contributions from the proceeds going to a Clean Water Fund.
Shivdansi believes the campaign could potentially generate up to $1bn annually if every property in the top ten hotel/resort groups participates in the scheme.
Shivdansi told European Spa Magazine: “Our industry has a responsibility to address this problem, as tourists and travellers often consume more water than local residents.”
“The Water Campaign says ‘no’ to imported, branded bottled water, which uses unnecessary food miles and wasteful packaging, and supports the development of a profitable, sustainable alternative where 10% of the proceeds go to clean water funds,” he added.
