Eco Mantra

Eco Mantra Better solutions for Energy, Water and Waste. Mantra helps to foster complex system thinking and e

Waste management in hospitality is entering a new phase in Bali.Properties have always been expected to handle waste res...
08/05/2026

Waste management in hospitality is entering a new phase in Bali.

Properties have always been expected to handle waste responsibly — but regulations are now becoming stricter, enforcement is increasing, and expectations around landfill reduction are no longer optional background conversations.
Many properties are trying to improve.

But most waste systems don’t fail because people “don’t care.”
They fail because properties are operating without visibility.
Many teams know they generate waste. Far fewer know:

• where it comes from
• what happens at source
• what gets contaminated
• or what actually happens after collection

And without that clarity, it becomes almost impossible to improve outcomes, reduce landfill, or confidently meet compliance requirements.

That’s why we created the Waste Management Quick Start.
A fixed-scope, on-site audit designed specifically for hospitality properties in Bali.

We assess:
– waste streams by category
– source points across departments
– separation practices
– operational gaps
– and immediate opportunities for improvement

You receive a report and action plan within two weeks, with a clear picture of where your property actually stands — and what needs attention first.

And for properties ready to go further, we have the operational systems, implementation support, and downstream partnerships to help dramatically reduce landfill dependency — with some client properties already operating at under 1% waste to landfill.

Because effective waste management doesn’t start with ambitious targets.

It starts with knowing your system properly.

Find the link in bio or send us a DM with your questions.

The most common review a well-designed regenerative property gets isn't just about the solar panels or the certification...
24/04/2026

The most common review a well-designed regenerative property gets isn't just about the solar panels or the certification.

It's some version of: "I don't know why, but it just felt right."

Guests rarely have the language for what they're responding to. But they feel the difference between a room that was oriented well and one that wasn't. Between a site that still sounds like itself and one that doesn't.

That gap — between what guests can name and what they actually experience — is where the real design brief lives.

Most properties try to close it with storytelling. The ones that actually close it do it with decisions made before the structure goes up.

Quote attribution Tara Schwenk, Senior Director of Digital Strategy, Lemongrass Marketing — from It's a Journey – a sustainable travel podcast, Lemongrass Insight Trend Report episode. Quote lightly edited for length and readability; substance preserved.

 

There are over 2,300 hotels in development across the Asia Pacific right now. A handful of them will still feel worth vi...
21/04/2026

There are over 2,300 hotels in development across the Asia Pacific right now. A handful of them will still feel worth visiting in twenty years.

The difference is mostly decided in design meetings that happen early in the project. Not in the choice of materials or the amenity list — in whether environmental thinking is shaping the brief or being added to it afterward.

The properties guests return to are the ones where site logic, water strategy, and landscape integration were part of the brief from the first meeting. That sequencing cannot be recovered later. It shapes what the property is capable of becoming.

If you are starting a project, this is the moment that matters most.

Source: Lodging Econometrics, Q4 2025 Hotel Construction Pipeline Trend Report (Asia Pacific, excluding China)

What would change if the place came first — before the program, before the brief, before the budget conversation? Most d...
17/04/2026

What would change if the place came first — before the program, before the brief, before the budget conversation? 

Most development decisions start with the market. Occupancy targets, competitive set, what’s working in the region. Those are real constraints. But the properties that endure — the ones guests return to, talk about, and choose over newer options — tend to have something the market analysis didn’t produce. A relationship with where they stand. 

Regenerative design isn’t a certification or a sustainability chapter at the back of the report. It’s a way of sequencing decisions so that the land, water, community, and ecology around a property are treated as the foundation — not the footnote. 

The result is a property that performs differently. More resilient to disruption. Harder to replicate. More connected to the kind of travel that’s growing fastest right now. 

This carousel is about that shift — in how development decisions get made, and what becomes possible when the place comes first. 

There is a certain kind of place that stays with you after you leave. Not because it was beautiful, though it might have...
08/04/2026

There is a certain kind of place that stays with you after you leave. Not because it was beautiful, though it might have been. Because something about being there shifted what you understood to be possible.

Guests don't just pass through a well-designed property. They inhabit it — and the thinking embedded in it travels home with them. That quiet transfer of values is why hospitality is one of the most powerful levers we have for shifting how people relate to the environment.

It is also why the decisions made at the very start of a project matter so much. That beginning is where we do our best work.

Some things take decades to understand. In our tenth year alone: 8 ESD concepts, 2 projects built, 5 waste audits, 2 lif...
17/03/2026

Some things take decades to understand.
 
In our tenth year alone: 8 ESD concepts, 2 projects built, 5 waste audits, 2 life cycle analyses, 2 carbon GHG calculations, 4 projects retained.
 
Since 2020, the work has saved 7.1 billion liters of water, reduced 813 million tonnes of CO2e, preserved 69,000 m² of land for biodiversity preservation, and returned $36 million in financial savings to the clients who chose to build differently.
 
9 years. That’s what stands between now and our two-decade goal.
 
Year ten taught us something we’re still sitting with: that regenerative design isn’t a methodology you apply. It’s a conviction you deepen, project by project, season by season.
 
We got more serious about what it means. More honest about how far the work still needs to go. We started moving as a collective in nature, in movement, in the way we show up for each other and for the places we work in.
 
And we began a process of transformation through the Stanford Seed Transformation Program that is still unfolding.
 
To everyone who has been part of this network, the people in these slides and the ones who never made it into a frame, thank you. The mycelium is ready. The forest is next.
 

16/03/2026

Chengdu closed the circle for Future+ when thirty practitioners gathering at Sea Life to mark the end of a journey that moved through Kuching, Bali, and back to China again.

For Mendi, it began in Kuching, close to his hometown of Pontianak. Five days inside a transformed supermarket, learning through people, stories, and the city itself. Bali deepened that walking rice fields, staying in local homes, listening to communities who have been practicing regeneration long before the word existed.

By Chengdu, the gathering was less about learning and more about reflecting on what had already taken root.

For Eco-Mantra, this has settled into something practical. Regenerative thinking now shapes how we read a site, how we listen to a place, and how we work alongside clients from the very beginning. Across Bali and Southeast Asia, this is the foundation we build from.

16/03/2026

Chengdu marked the closing of a full circle for Future+ returning to China after a journey that moved through Kuching, Bali, and back again. Thirty alumni, friends, designers, educators, and practitioners gathered at Xilai to reflect on everything the program had carried across those years and cities.

Kuching was where Mendi’s journey began, when five days inside a transformed supermarket, learning through people, stories, and the city itself. Bali deepened that understanding, walking through rice fields managed by generations of tradition, staying in local homes, hearing directly how communities preserve land, water, and culture.

Chengdu brought the community back together to ask the questions that sit beneath the work. What truly nourishes our life? Who are we becoming as a community? How do we strengthen the connections that make this practice meaningful over time?

This experience continues to shape how Eco-Mantra approaches every project. Regenerative practice is now embedded in how we read a site, how we engage with clients, and the questions we bring into the earliest conversations of a development designing places that restore, connect, and endure across Bali and Southeast Asia.

10/03/2026

We brought ChopValue into our space so our clients and partners can touch, see, and feel what responsible material sourcing actually looks like. A table they can put their hands on, made from chopsticks that would have otherwise been burned or dumped.

Bamboo takes three years to grow, and we turn it into a chopstick that gets used for 30 minutes. But after ChopValue recycles it into a table and desk, it sits in a room for over a decade.

Because the moment we stop calling something waste, we start seeing what it could still become.

There is a moment, when you walk into a space and something in you settles.You don’t know why. The room hasn’t asked any...
26/02/2026

There is a moment, when you walk into a space and something in you settles.

You don’t know why. The room hasn’t asked anything of you. But something about the way light falls, the way air moves, the way the ceiling meets the wall something has already done its work before you were conscious of it.

Classical feng shui spent thousands of years trying to understand that moment. Not as superstition. Not as decoration. As a serious inquiry into the relationship between built space and living bodies between the forces already moving through a landscape and the human decision to place a life within it.

It began not with individual rooms, but with something larger: the question of how the living and the dead, across generations, could be placed within the natural world in a way that honored what the land was already doing. The homes of families and the resting places of ancestors were always part of the same system. One logic. One conversation between human presence and earthly forces.

That conversation never ended.
It just changed languages.

Today it speaks through passive design through solar path calculations and ventilation diagrams and biophilic research. It speaks through the neuroscience of enclosure, through studies on cortisol and light and the cognitive cost of bad air. The body, it turns out, has always known what classical feng shui was trying to say. Science is only now finding the words.

We are not inventing new wisdom. We are remembering old intelligence.

Organic waste is at the heart of Bali’s waste crisis. In a humid tropical climate, unmanaged organic waste generates met...
20/02/2026

Organic waste is at the heart of Bali’s waste crisis. In a humid tropical climate, unmanaged organic waste generates methane and leachate and contaminates recyclable materials, creating structural risk.

On National Waste Awareness Day today, the debate surrounding TPA Suwung reminds us that this issue is systemic, not symbolic.

In Ubud, the journey of Locavore NXT began with their passion on local ingredients. Over time, they also adopted a philosophy of taking responsibility for waste. Their relocation at the end of 2023 was pivotal; they redesigned their operations to compost, biologically treat, and regenerate materials, diverting 98,4% waste from landfills in their first year operation. They boldly announced their presence with the motto, "More than a restaurant. A localized rebellion."

Earlier this year, Eco-Mantra audited their systems and is now supporting the next phase: moving beyond reduction toward regeneration which they are already doing now.

Awareness matters. Designing the system matters more.

Address

Jln. Raya Campuhan 88X
Ubud
80571

Opening Hours

Monday 09:00 - 17:00
Tuesday 09:00 - 17:00
Wednesday 09:00 - 17:00
Thursday 09:00 - 17:00
Friday 09:00 - 17:00

Telephone

+6281337030872

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Eco Mantra posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to Eco Mantra:

Shortcuts

Share

Category