Townsville resort turns water fail into eco success-video transcript

In this Townsville Eco resort climate action case study video, business co-owner Fiona Lidgett explains how a water fail in the first week of owning their business led them to building a wetland and reverse osmosis system.

Townsville resort turns water fail into eco success

[Fiona Lidgett – Co-owner, Townsville Eco Resort]

Climate action for me personally is about reducing your footprint for now leaving it in a better place for future generations than what it is right now.

My name's Fiona Lidgett, and myself and my husband, Martin, own Townsville Eco Resort, and we've been here for around 9 years now.

Just before the floods, we installed solar PV and battery backup, that has reduced our power bills by half and reduces the carbon emissions.

We have also made use of white roofing systems for cooling effect and things like that, ensured our lighting is LED, our lighting is on timing as well.

We have a number of recycling programs in place where we mulch a lot of our green waste on site to reduce emissions, we do recycling for our cans and bottles and things, and the money that we earn back from that goes into habitat protection within the park.

When we took over, we had water fail in the first week of our ownership, and we came up with the option of a reverse osmosis system. We constructed the wetland, which purifies all our onsite wastewater.

As an advanced ecotourism business, we very much support our local region in ecotourism, especially, we're right in the middle of the Great Barrier Reef.

The constructed wetland helps with water runoff to the reef, it enables that water to be very clean.

[Jason Lange – Director, Atlas Soils]

The ecosystems in the Great Barrier Reef catchment are very unique and very interesting as an ecological professional, so the resort allows people, academics, and visitors a chance to interact with the wetland that's not commonly in an urban area.

So Atlas Soils involvement was around biological best practice on the banks of the wetland, and so, that's very much about activating the biology that keeps that wetland system functioning optimally.

[Fiona Lidgett]

There's been a huge benefit to us in the environment here, we've seen a lot of wildlife return.

It's important to know that you don't have to have a huge business to be able to start somewhere, it might be recycling your paper, it might be putting some solar in, and it's just a matter of exploring those options available.

We're very proud that Townsville region has a great base and a great support network for implementing environmental initiatives and supporting climate action from local council to local government to small businesses.

If you don't have the knowledge, you've got to reach out to the people that have it that can hold your hand along the way.

Watch the Townsville eco resort climate action case study video.