The short answer: it's about wages and sourcing, not bamboo straws
We're B Corp certified, and the part of that certification we care about most is the boring part: how the people who work here are paid and how the money moves through the island. With tips and bonuses, nobody at Blue Apple takes home less than the established living wage in Colombia, and our lowest wage sits a minimum of 15% above the national minimum. Most of our team comes from the islands around us. That is the sustainability story. Everything else is downstream of it.
We chose B Corp over the other certifications for two reasons. It keeps making money at the centre of the operation, because we're a for-profit business and pretending otherwise helps nobody, and it looks at the whole company rather than handing out a sticker for a towel-reuse policy.
What we get right
The kitchen buys close to home. We're conscientious about what we buy and what you put in your body. The meat we serve is sustainably raised and ethically treated, including how far the animal travelled, and most of what's on the plate is local. Our kitchen was built by Chef Silvestre Saiz Cortazar and Pedro Mosqueda runs it now as Executive Chef. Farm-to-table gets said a lot on this coast. Ask us where a specific dish came from and you'll get a specific answer.
We run on solar. Island hotels are not connected to public utilities the way city hotels are, so power, water and waste are all our own problem to solve rather than something that arrives in a pipe.
The village is part of the business, not a backdrop. Bocachica, the village at our end of Tierra Bomba, has no running water and no paved roads. We run tours into it, and the reason we'd rather you went with us than wandered in on your own is simply that it puts money in the right hands. Go. It will rearrange what you thought this coast was.
What we get wrong
We're not perfect and we'd rather tell you than have you find out.
- We have air conditioning in the rooms. On this island, in this heat, we're not going to pretend that's an efficiency choice.
- We still send roughly half a ton of waste to landfill every month. That number should be smaller and we know it.
- Everyone and everything here arrives on a fossil-fuelled boat. We offset it, and offsetting is not the same as not burning it.
- We serve Italian bottled water, which means flying water around the world, and it's the hardest one for us to reconcile. The people behind San Pellegrino and Acqua Panna do more on water stewardship than any local alternative we've found, so we made a trade we're still arguing about internally.
Next on the list: we've been lazy about measuring CO2, so that's the big project. After that, serious work on biodiversity, professional development for the team, and converting our boats to biofuel or electric.
Sustainable doesn't have to mean quiet
Who decided that kindness and consideration had to be boring? There's music here, a lot of it from underrepresented artists, and there's drinking, and then we recycle the bottles. Weekdays are calm, weekends are livelier. Sustainability should feel like something you want to be part of, not a penance you sit through in a linen shirt.
We were also the first beach club in Cartagena with a wine list, which we mention mostly because it undercuts the idea that caring about your supply chain means eating brown rice in silence.
What this looks like as a guest
We're 11 rooms and a beach club on the southern shore of Tierra Bomba, facing the open sea, 25 minutes by boat from Muelle de la Bodeguita in Cartagena. Boats leave at 10am, 11:30am and 5pm.
A few practical consequences of being off-grid on an island:
- There's a $20 per night resort fee. City hotels are connected to public utilities; we generate, treat and haul everything ourselves, and that's what the fee covers.
- There's no phone signal on the island. WhatsApp works, and we answer reservation messages between 9am and 9pm.
- Our sand is dark and volcanic, not the powder white of the Rosario Islands. It's natural and clean and it faces open ocean.
- We're not wheelchair accessible. We're at the end of a boat ride and a 200 metre sandy track, and the place wasn't built with accessibility in mind. We're sorry about that.
Is a certification worth choosing a hotel over?
On its own, no. Plenty of places on this coast will tell you they're eco. What we'd suggest instead is asking any hotel three questions: what's your lowest wage, where does your food come from, and what happens to your waste. We've answered all three above, including the answer we don't like. If a place can't answer them, the certification on the website isn't doing much work.
Come and check. Ask the team what they're paid. We'd genuinely rather you did.