Sonu Shivdasani's best-kept secrets

The iconic hotelier on his plans for the environment and a secret new resort he mustn't yet talk about

- Jamal Shaikh

At the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit last year, hotelier Sonu Shivdasani spoke extensively about the hospitality industry's responsibility towards the environment.

Leisure can't come at the cost of the future of our planet, he seemed to say.

His competition if you can think of anymay have scoffed. You have to take care of your environment, they could tell him. Your main resorts are in the Maldivian islands, which are in danger of extinction.

The truth is, Sonu's commitment to the environment, local culture and giving back dates to long before these phrases became millennial buzzwords. When I first visited Soneva Fushi and the then Soneva Gili in 2007, they used glass bottles instead of plastic ones. And Sonu always hired local talent, ensuring a touch of Maldives in an otherwise insulated international resort.

Then, in 2019, Sonu and his wife Eva quietly but surely started Namoona, a project aimed at organising waste management on the islands, but has today grown into so much more.

Waste to wealth

"Soneva Namoona was launched to solve a problem that has bedevilled the Maldives for a generation: how to properly dispose of waste. Presently, island communities burn their garbage in toxic, open bonfires, and significant amounts of waste, especially singleuse plastics, washes up on the beaches, litters the jungles and smothers the coral reefs," says Sonu, giving us the very opposite of the pictureperfect image that any thought of the Maldives instantly throws up.

"The word 'Namoona' was a suggestion from the Dharavandhoo Council President, and is a Divehi word that means 'exemplary' or 'ideal'," explains Sonu. "Our ambition is to create a blueprint for empowered zero waste communities in the Maldives, centred around the three core components of reduce, recycle and inspire, and grounded in the reality of the challenges and opportunities that are unique to local islands."