Ban's Eco Tour

6/8/2015

I don't know how I was lucky enough to have happened upon Ban's diving 2 years ago, but the longer I stay here the better I feel about my decision to build my dive experience and career with such an excellent company. Ban's is the largest single diving operation in the world (if my sources are corect) and while founded by a foreigner, is now owned and run by a Thai woman...pretty incredible if you consider that women in this country are still supressed in many ways. The resort is also at least 70% self sufficient. They organically grow all of the fresh produce they serve in their restaurants. All shampoos, conditioners, soaps, and cleaning products they use are made by on-site chemists who use fermented fruits and other organic ingredients. They have a shop where electronics are serviced and fixed to be reused. They organize beach and reef clean ups and personally sort and recycle everything and send it to a recycling plant on the mainland. They also collect the human waste from all over the island and use it to fertalize all of the non-edible vegitation around the resort...which makes the resort pretty smelly around 4:30-5:00 in the afternoon, but I'd rather put up with it here than in my oceans. It's really a pretty spectacular operation, and I should know because I've taken the ECO tour of the resort not once, but twice.
It's just really nice to see a company work so hard to protect the environment around them, and in the process they are helping their own business operations....funny how that works.