Elizabeth Gilbert devotees, yoga fanatics, hippies at heart: thousands visit the Island of the Gods each year seeking a hard refresh. They check into ashrams, health retreats and stays with soul-reviving activities, hoping to catch the plane back as a happier, calmer person reborn. But it’s easy to get lost on the way to finding yourself, so let us gently direct you to Desa Potato Head, where transformations result in an end product that is beautiful, useful and often benefits the wider community — whether that’s you at check-out, or a chair made out of discarded Sprite bottles.
Rather than the sort of mantra you might inwardly hum as you pretzel yourself into lotus pose, Potato Head’s is a rousing ‘Good Times, Do Good’, coined by the founder Ronald Akili. He created an eco-forward beach club that evolved into the village (or ‘Desa’) that the hotel’s now contained in, after he encountered waves of plastic waste while on a surf holiday with his son. This spurred Akili on to loftier goals, which align with Bali’s ‘Tri Hita Karana’ philosophy (achieving harmony with God, the people and the environment).
His aims for the hotel are to work towards net-zero status; become fully zero-waste, then to clean up its Petitenget Beach setting, the Batu Belig neighbourhood and eventually the whole island. Having recently launched a community waste project, where local businesses that volunteer to take part are held accountable for sorting their rubbish, these achievements are already underway. As for the community, locals are employed at the hotel’s lockdown project Sweet Potato Farm, which supplies food to orphanages and produce for the restaurants’ plant-based eats; and with the Headstream online radio station, Balinese bands and activists are amplified.
Perhaps the most intriguing of these goals is ‘to be sustainable in a beautiful way: to create awareness by inspiring instead of preaching’. This means no numbing guests with rambling lists of numbers and technical terms, instead showing them just how stylish a load of old rubbish can be. However, it must be noted that out of 489,699 kilogrammes of waste (equivalent in size to three blue whales) generated by guests, just 2.9% was sent to landfill in 2023, the rest being recycled; and 36,437 meals were provided to orphanages.
Nosing through bins filled with bottles, staring at piles of compost and watching toilet paper be processed may not be how you envisaged your time in paradise, but the hotel’s Follow the Waste tour, which walks guests through its strategies of reusing and upcycling, is brilliantly imaginative. It culminates at the Waste Lab, where dazzling terrazzo chairs are made from colourful HDPE plastics, along with other covetable homewares crafted from styrofoam (a notoriously difficult substance to recycle) and shells, which you’ll find in your room: trays, toothbrush-holders, tissue boxes, soap-dispensers… all available to buy, FYI. Like magic, these Willy Wonkas of waste conjure vases and glassware from wine and beer bottles; rugs and aprons from worn hotel linens; and slippers from coconut husks and palm leaves. Oil is made into candles or biofuel, which is then donated to the nearby Green School to fuel buses that pick up students. It’s round-and-round regeneration, where neither being green nor aesthetics are an afterthought.
Designers Max Lamb, Faye Toogood and Andreu Carulla have also turned hundreds of discarded bottles and locally sourced stone, bamboo and palm fibre into elegantly ergonomic statement chairs and lamps. Today’s trash being tomorrow’s Architectural Digest spread is testament to the expansive possibilities of recycling when you’re as dedicated as the team here. If sparks of inspiration fly, guests can harvest thrown-away treasures on sociable beach clean-up sessions or as they canoe through mangroves (stopping to plant seedlings along the way), then create sustainable souvenirs at an upcycling workshop.
This full-loop process is effectively engaging. When something you’re served at dinner might later be part of the chair you’re perched on, you may be more inclined to sit up and take notice. Thought-provoking design is worked into the hotel environment as easily and breezily as a guest reclining into a sound-healing session or a waiter wafting over with some arak-laced cocktails. Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas’s studio OMA swapped out thatched pagodas in favour of a dynamic and colourful, Bauhaus-by-the-beach look, created with thousands of traditional temple bricks, handfired using biomass fuel; recycled-plastic roofing; and towering walls made of repurposed window shutters. And guests’ minds — now opened by morning ‘energy activations’, qi gong, sacred dance or Emotional Freedom Technique sessions — are perhaps more ready to consider the questions posed by large-scale art installations. These include Liina Klauss’s 5,000 Lost Soles, a cascading rainbow of thrown-away flip-flops collected on just six trips to Balinese beaches; and Futura 2000’s Pointman — River Warrior, a totemic figure made using 888 kilogrammes of plastic from junked motor-oil bottles, collected by Yayasan Kakikita, a non-profit recycling outfit who employ those with disabilities.
It is indeed a less finger-wagging way of encouraging people to consider environmental safeguarding. The kaleidoscopic flavours of a jackfruit curry with ginger-pickled pineapple, green-tomato sambal and spiced coconut might just coax a carnivore into more plant-based eating habits; kids learning how to upcycle as play in the club on-site will bring home more than just a unique souvenir; and those taking the plunge into activities such as astrology readings, making jamu (a medicinal Balinese drink of spices and fruit), or dancing nights away to the souped-up gamelan beats of up-and-coming Balinese DJs might leave feeling like they’re ready to take on the world. With Desa Potato Head’s kindhearted enlightenment and — just as importantly — full-tilt sense of fun, true to the motto, those good times may well lead to a whole lot of doing good.
Turn over a new leaf at Desa Potato Head Suites and Studios, or see our full collection of hotels in Bali and our sustainability heroes around the world