Inside Bali's Potato Head: I visited a luxury hotel that is redefining zero-waste travel

Yahoo

7 days ago

It was on a bus driving through the northern desert of Uzbekistan when an American woman I'd just met turned to me and said, 'Oh, you do environmental travel stories - have you been to Potato Head?'
I hadn't. In fact, my first reaction was that it sounded like a venue out of Toy Story, hosted by Mr and Mrs Potato Head themselves.
How wrong I was. It's actually a luxury eco resort in Indonesia and, according to her, the 'most legit sustainable hotel' she'd ever been to. 'Don't hesitate,' she said, 'just go.'
With a claim as strong as this, there was no way I wasn't going to look into it. Of course, the idea of a luxury resort, with flights to reach it and spacious rooms and pools, being 'sustainable' at all might raise eyebrows.
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Can a destination for jet-setters ever be truly eco-conscious? Potato Head doesn't claim to have all the answers, but it is a place where you don't have to choose between doing good and feeling good.
Two weeks after my chance encounter in Uzbekistan, I'm on the plane from London to Bali, with sky-high expectations.
My eyes are drawn first to the architecture at Potato Head. I'm met at the entrance by a dramatic courtyard surrounded by lush greenery - almost like a 'tropical Barbican' (an icon of Brutalist architecture, for my non-London-based readers).
The buildings containing the studios are made out of roughly two million hand-pressed terracotta bricks from nearby villages, and the floor beneath me is bright and colourful, crafted from a mixture of broken ceramics and glass from the area.
From a design perspective alone, I soon realised this was unlike any hotel I had ever stayed at. Far from marble lobbies and the sanitised opulence of your usual luxury chain, Potato Head felt different.
You don't necessarily notice that all the walls and materials are made from recycled materials, because it's all decorated so elegantly. But find yourself absent-mindedly staring at the ceiling in reception, when you arrive, at intricate green crochet woven out of old Sprite bottles.
The exterior of the hotel's beach club next door is even more striking, built completely out of reclaimed wooden shutters, salvaged from across Java, and the roof is thatched out of 5,000 flip-flops collected from the shoreline.
The fact that the luxury feel of Potato Head attracts an upmarket crowd, who don't even realise they are staying in a place that is pioneering zero-waste in Indonesia, is perhaps the best part.
Guests are even encouraged to take part in beach clean-ups every day. If you fill up a basket, you get a token for a free drink - quite the motivation, given how good the cocktails are.
Almost nothing inside the hotel is disposable. Take the candles on every surface - glass holders made from the bottom half of used wine bottles, and the candle itself a combination of beeswax and the used chip fat oil from the kitchen.
Certain details catch your eye - like the oyster shells from the fish restaurant, which get threaded and turned into decorations, the coconut slippers in my bedroom, or the staff aprons made from worn-out bed linen.
Then there are the countless objects we take for granted in hotels, soap bottles, refillable shampoo bottles, coasters and the glass and kitchenware, which are all made from collected plastic and turned into products in their waste studio.
You can even sit on these creations. Led by British designer Max Lamb, a new collection of chairs called WASTED is launching in early August to the public. They were so sleek and beautiful (as though they belonged in a gallery) that I wanted to take them all home to adorn my small London flat. Sadly, they wouldn't fit in my suitcase.
The waste thing is not a vanity project either. Bali's natural beauty is world-renowned, but beneath its pristine beaches lies a mounting environmental crisis. The island produces a staggering 1.6 million tonnes of waste each year, including 330,000 tonnes of plastic.
Because of ineffective waste management, much of the rubbish goes uncollected. Significant amounts end up in rivers and ultimately in the ocean, threatening Bali's ecosystem, the livelihood of its communities and the tourism industry on which it depends.
By becoming 97.5 per cent zero waste itself, Potato Head (which is B Corp certified) is acting as a shining example in the region. Now they are expanding out to the local community, too.
Together with a few other nearby businesses, Potato Head has launched a community waste project, aimed at drastically reducing the island's landfill waste and setting a new standard for sustainability in Indonesia.
To turn Bali's waste into practical, affordable products for the hospitality industry, they have built a 2,000 m² recycling centre to process organic, inorganic and garden waste through a journey of advanced sorting, composting and upcycling.
Founder Ronald Akili tells me, 'Regenerative hospitality is not a fad – it's a powerful tool for change, but there's still so much left to do. We hope to inspire the next generation of travel.'
The aim is to cut waste from participating businesses in the region from over 50 per cent to a bold target of just 5 per cent - and they are well on their way already.
Of course, while Potato Head has the capital and creative clout to lead Bali's zero-waste movement, it remains to be seen how widely its innovations can be adopted by smaller, less resource-rich players in the tourism industry.
Throughout your stay, here's what I'd recommend eating and drinking. There are three restaurants, but my favourite was the plant-based 'Tanaman'.
After a Balinese flower bath in your room, where bathwater is re-used to nourish the hotel's greenery afterwards, head down for a cocktail with a twist.
The local take on a Negroni is made with a herbal bitter instead of Campari, topped with Balinese candlenut. These seeds are only found in Southeast Asia and Polynesia and give it a mild nutty, creamy bitterness.
The 'cactus margarita' was also delicious - mixed with a spicy mezcal and topped with the island's very common dragonfruit. The cocktails were so good that I had two before I'd even started my meal.
To eat, I couldn't get enough of the crispy jackfruit 'nuggets' with sweet chilli sauce. For your main, get the tempeh satay with peanut sauce and vegan prawn crackers - made from the seeds of the melinjo tree. For dessert, I inhaled the Balinese cacao mousse with vegan chocolate ganache and beetroot gel - the perfect blend of sweet and sour - and not too heavy.
All the restaurants are in the process of ensuring that a quarter of their food menus produce a byproduct too, like turning breadcrumbs into soy sauce, turning the white part of watermelons into pickles or using leftover tomato skin as a powder for the chips they serve.
And for the wine lovers? There was an organic wine evening hosted at Dome restaurant while I was staying there - a collaboration with Argentinian label Santa Julia.
I was treated to a smooth orange wine by the exceptional in-house sommelier, Minyoung Ryu, hailing from South Korea, who taught me all about skin-contact chardonnay. Minyoung, along with many of the hotel staff I spoke with, said she was proud to be part of a movement shifting perceptions of Bali's hospitality sector.
When I could bring myself to leave the hotel's poolside, I travelled north to the rice fields and forests of Ubud, to see the monkeys and sample traditional sweet treats. My favourite was Laklak, little rice flour pancakes with grated coconut and brown sugar syrup.
Ubud is also home to many temples. I visited the Pyramids of Chi, a sound‑healing sanctuary where I took part in a deeply spiritual breathwork class. If you haven't tried breathwork, I highly recommend it.
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Venturing 40 minutes by boat from the mainland to the island of Nusa Lembongan, I went scuba diving with manta rays and even a bamboo shark. Then I drove down the south coast to breathe in salty air on the cliffs of Uluwatu as surfers skimmed across the surface of the ocean.
From the hotel itself, I also took a canoe trip to a nearby mangrove forest, within the Ngurah Rai Grand Forest Park in Benoa Bay, to litter pick and plant some mangrove seeds. The water reflects the dense greenery around you in the canoe, like a mirror in the late afternoon light. It's a complete escape from the bustling streets of Seminyak.
Before I left the UK, I asked some friends who'd been to Bali if they knew about Potato Head. Their responses were unanimous: 'The fun beach club in Seminyak?' It's well-known for its day (and night) club with poolside cocktails and stunning sunsets.
But no one I asked knew about the green side of Potato Head.
Why? Because the ethos of the hotel is not to reel in sustainably-minded travellers - it's to attract those after a luxurious, wellness-centred experience, with unique architecture and exceptional food.
'Our mission is to make the experience beautiful - it just so happens to be more sustainable,' Akili told me.
'We aim for progress over perfection,' he concludes. As far as I can see, they come pretty close.