Every Decision
Makes a Difference
Everyday Sustainability
At Isla Palenque, our dedication to sustainability guides our design, our everyday decisions and our guest experience. Explore some of our sustainable practice highlights here.
Green Gardening
From organic veggies to native flora, we keep our island green
Our food philosophy revolves around fresh, locally-sourced ingredients. That’s why we grow as much fruit, veg and herbs as we can in our island’s organic garden.
But our “green gardening” doesn’t stop there. Our 400-acres of rainforest are populated by almost exclusively native flora which helps to attract and sustain local wildlife. In the dry season, which sees months of sunshine and almost zero precipitation, we keep the island lush by irrigating with rainwater we’ve harvested as well as the purified wastewater we treat on the island.
Dock to Dish
Sustainable Seafood, Sourced Locally
We’re proud to partner with the Dock to Dish program to bring back the catch of the day. This means that we’ll receive deliveries of fresh and sustainably caught seafood from the fishermen right down the road in Boca Chica, and they’ll always be paid fairly for their hard work.
We can promise that your seafood is always local and always delicious, and we can say the same for our other ingredients too.
We work closely with our local suppliers to ensure that every product is organic, that every chicken is hormone-free and that every cow is grass-fed. Your breakfast eggs will be free-range, your wines South American, and your meals all feel-good.
Organic Cleaning Products &
Bath Amenities
Set within 400-acres of raw nature, we like to keep things — natural
Warning! Flammable! Toxic! With labels like these on many conventional cleaning products, going 100% organic was never a difficult decision for us.
The fully biodegradable products we use don’t contain hazardous chemicals so they won’t adversely affect our ecosystems or us.
When you stay at Isla Palenque, you’ll also enjoy sumptuous, 100% organic and locally-produced bathroom amenities. We always make a conscious effort to source as many products as we can from as close to home as possible.
No-Plastic Policy
We’re proud to have banished all single-use plastics from the island
At Isla Palenque we’ve made the conscious decision to get rid of all plastic water bottles from our island. They take vast quantities of fossil fuels to produce, and are non-biodegradable.
More often than not, used bottles don’t get recycled either and end up in our oceans. Water on the island is 100% potable and we instead encourage our guests to use the reusable bottles that we provide.
We have also replaced single-use plastic straws with locally-made papaya leaf stalks. They’re compostable which helps us reduce the amount of non-recyclable waste we produce.
Green By Design
We’ve built sustainability into our DNA
We work hard to keep our carbon emissions as low as possible. One way we do that is by putting our Panamanian sunshine to good use through solar panels which heat water for our guest rooms.
If it happens to be cloudy, we have energy-saving auxiliary water heaters as a backup. Either way, your showers will always be hot. Our lightbulbs have been carefully chosen to be energy efficient too, and we always monitor our utility consumption, looking for ways to reduce our energy usage.
Sustainability Tour
Let us show you how we’ve gone green
The practices on this page are a drop in the ocean of our sustainability initiatives. Let us show you more.
We invite you to join us at Isla Palenque for a complimentary back of the house tour where you’ll see for yourself how we keep our operations green, how we support our community, and how we protect our flora and fauna. We’ll take you around the hidden areas, giving you a real insight into sustainable hospitality.
A Sustainable Luxury Symbiosis
“Isla Palenque is truly an over-the-top experience both in the beauty of the island, the amazing attentiveness and friendliness of the staff and the beautiful way the buildings are nestled into the trees, rocks and surroundings. If you are looking for a trip to take in the beauty of the world, in a location where the environment is respected and revered, you cannot go wrong here!”
– Greg, Wisconsin
