How to have an eco holiday in Ibiza

SUSTAINABILITY Guilt-free good times on the hedonistic White Isle? It's easy if you know where to look, says Simon Kurs

IT’S twilight in Ibiza and Margaret von Korff is getting excited about manure which is destined for somewhere special. “I call it The Temple,” says von Korff, gesturing to a far corner of hotel Cas Gasi’s grounds. “Because it really looks like one. It’s fantastic.”

There lies the object of the hotelier’s affection — a new composting facility where each day waste from her freerange chickens mixes with organic leftovers from the kitchen, eventually transforming into fertiliser that will be used in Cas Gasi’s vegetable gardens.

The magic, for von Korff, is less in the manure itself and more in the virtuous cycle that The Temple facilitates between plant bed and Cas Gasi’s restaurant — where every fruit or vegetable on the menu has been grown on site, nourished by the homegrown feed.

Von Korff is no ordinary hotel owner and her no-waste ethos is typical of an approach that has made the Barcelona-born German a pioneer here on the White Isle since she opened Cas Gasi in 1995. Over nearly three decades, she has transformed her family home, a 19th-century farmhouse in the countryside close to Santa Gertrudis, into one of the island’s most desirable — and greenest — places to stay, a 21-room sanctuary that is a favourite of island regulars such as Kate Moss and Jade Jagger. Recycling is just one part of a wider planet-first philosophy that today includes no-dig gardens; an on-site water-cleansing plant that creates clean water for irrigation; salt-water swimming pools; and photovoltaic cells on every roof, which allow Cas Gasi to be energy self-sufficient in summer.