Among the list of ecologically minded resorts in Mexico is Palace Resorts, with 13 high-end all-inclusive properties located throughout Cancún, the Riviera Maya, Cozumel, Riviera Nayarit, and Punta Cana.  Palace Resorts set the standard in five-star, all-inclusive resort accommodations, has made the move to also be environmentally friendly.

These all-inclusive Mexico vacation resorts have interpreted steps to earn Certificado de Calidad Ambiental Turística, (certificate for environmental quality in tourism) from Mexico’s protection environmental agency – PROFEPA (Procuraduría Federal de Protección al Ambiente) for complying with the environmental regulations, as well as gives back to the community.

Below are some steps the company is taking to make their resorts more environmentally friendly.

Palace Resorts Environmental Committee
In an effort to relieve natural resources and supply more green areas throughout all of its resorts, Palace Resorts has created an environmental committee, “Comité Ambiental Palace Resorts”, whose mission is to forbid and control pollution and debasement of the environment through the efficient use of the resources with the target of sustainable development.

To that end, the committee works with all the resorts to educate personnel on caring for the environment, reduce the amount of waste and trash generated, advance the purchase of environmentally friendly products, implement a recycling and trash sorting program to reduce waste, regulate emissions from all the resorts to reduce their carbon output, administer a series of “green areas” at all the properties, implement the use of “green signs”, which include the original names and descriptions of the flora currently planted, and much, much more.

Paperless Technology
In an effort to reduce the amount of paper used, Palace Resorts has invested in state-of-the-art electronic technology and posted electronic schedule boards throughout all of the resorts, thus eliminating the use of printed schedules. Additionally, Palace Resorts offers online reservation and confirmation of all accommodations, as well as an online resource where guests can book tours, rental cars, tee times and spa treatments.

Saving Energy
Palace Resorts has made it a priority to conserve resources, not only in the populace spaces, but also in all the rooms at many of its resorts. Over the last three years, the company has been working to install state-of the art “light switches” that are triggered by inserting your room key. When the room key is inserted in the provided slot, the lights and the air conditioning in all the rooms can be controlled individually. However, when the room key is removed, everything turns off, thus decrease the expenditure of electricity.

Reuse & Renew
With 12 all-inclusive resorts and more than 6,000 rooms brand-wide, Palace Resorts has enforced a linen reuse program that reduces its carbon footprint and the use of natural resources.

Giving Back
Over the last two years, Palace Resorts has implemented a system where all the unused food at its restaurants is donated to local food banks and shelters throughout the regions where they operate. Through this program, Palace has not only reduced waste but has helped feed the less fortunate in its communities.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
Palace Resorts has made the commitment to reduce its use of bottled water throughout all of their resorts. To this end, the company has installed a state-of-the-art water filtration system at each of its properties that will not only reduce its dependency on bottled water but also help the resort irrigate the grounds. However, in the instances when bottled water is preferred, Palace Resorts provides 1 ½ liter bottles as opposed to ½ liter bottles in effort to provide additional servings and cut down on the accumulated waste from the 1 serve containers. Furthermore, with the consent of event organizer, Palace Resorts is working to provide pitchers of water versus water bottles during all event coffee breaks. Lastly, to further reduce waste, Palace Resorts is working to implement a comprehensive recycling program throughout all of the resorts.  

Saving Indigenous Wildlife
Palace Resorts is pleased to support an integral protection sea turtle program that is working to establish protection efforts along the 7 miles of beach on the coast of Quintana Roo state. In three camp sites located at Moon Palace Golf and Spa Resort, Cancun Palace, Beach Palace and Sun Palace, that have been specifically authorized by the SEMARNAT (Mexico’s Environmental and Natural Resources Agency), Palace Resorts has saved 117,676 sea turtle eggs since the programs conception in 2005. The purpose of the program is to not only preserve and protect the eggs that sea turtles come to shore to lay, but to also provide environmental education, training, investigation and continuously evaluation of this majestic creature and work in concert so that they may carry on and thrive for years to come.

Palace Resorts’ “Green Thumb”
In effort to enrich and establish “green areas” that are representative of the natural vegetation throughout all of the Palace properties, Palace Resorts has established several environmentally friendly nurseries at the Centro de Distribución Palace (Distribution Center) with nearly 200,000 indigenous plants that represent a cross section of species collected from the jungle, wetlands, mangroves and coastal dunes. This distribution center offers several services, including acting as a impermanent home to local plants that are relocated during building or renovation of properties, a cultivation center used to nurture replacement plants to those that become damaged or unhealthy and to offer a base of operation where the Palace team of gardeners can work to repair and foster the future health of natural vegetation, coastal thickets, mangroves and dunes that serving as natural barriers in event of storms and hurricanes.

Palace Resorts, the company that set the standard in five-star, all-inclusive resort accommodations, offers twelve all-inclusive properties throughout Cancún, the Riviera Maya, Isla Mujeres, Riviera Nayarit, Cozumel and Punta Cana, Dominican Republic.

At each of the Palace Resorts, guests are provided with sumptuous, yet affordable accommodations, fine cuisine, 24-hour room service, top shelf drinks, sensational entertainment, wireless Internet, non-motorized water sports and unlimited select tours. Palace Resorts’ unparalleled level of service and comfort found at each property makes them a leader in providing world-class resort vacations in Mexico. 

Now, with their commitment to the environment, Palace Resorts have added yet another reason why Palace Resorts all-inclusive resorts are a favorite among travelers.

Moon Palace Cancun All Inclusive 

However, a team of researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory has offered a new model that provides the best explanation to date for the membrane’s structure and how it functions. And armed with that information, scientists should be able to build similar fuel-cell membrane materials that are less expensive or have different properties, such as higher operating temperatures.

A fuel cell works by pumping hydrogen gas through the proton exchange membrane. In the process, the hydrogen gives up electrons in the form of electricity, then combines with oxygen gas to form water as the by-product. It can also work in reverse – when current is applied, water is split into its component gases, hydrogen and oxygen.

The model proposed by Ames Laboratory scientists Klaus Schmidt-Rohr and Qiang Chen, and detailed in the December issue of the journal Nature Materials, looked specifically at Nafion®, a widely used perfluorinated polymer film that stands out for its high selective permeability to water and protons. Schmidt-Rohr, who is also a professor of chemistry at Iowa State University, suggests that Nafion® has a closely packed network of nanoscale cylindrical water channels running in parallel through the material.

“From nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), we know that Nafion® molecules have a rigid backbone structure with hair-like ‘defects’ along the chain,” Schmidt-Rohr said, “but we didn’t know just how these molecule were arranged. Some have proposed spheroidal water clusters, others a web-like network of water channels.”

“Our theory is that these hydrophobic (water-hating) backbone structures cluster together,” he continued, “to form long rigid cylinders about 2.5 nanometers in diameter with the hydrophilic ‘hairs’ to the inside of the water-filled tubes.”

Though the cylinders in different parts of the sample may not align perfectly, they do connect to create water channels passing through the membrane material, which can be 10’s of microns thick. It’s this structure of relatively wide diameter channels, densely packed and running mostly parallel through the material that helps explain how water and protons can so easily diffuse through Nafion®, “almost as easily as water passing through water” Schmidt-Rohr said.

To unlock the structure mystery, Schmidt-Rohr turned to mathematical modeling of small-angle X-ray and neutron scattering, or SAXS/SANS. X-ray or neutron radiation is scattered by the sample and the resulting scattering pattern is analyzed to provide information about the size, shape and orientation of the components of the sample on the nanometer scale.

Using an algorithm known as multidimensional Fourier transformation, Schmidt-Rohr was able to show that his model of long, densely packed channels closely matches the known scattering data of Nafion®. Mathematical modeling of other proposed structures, in which the water clusters have other shapes or connectivities, did not match the measured scattering curves.

“Our model also helps explain how conductivity continues even well below the freezing point of water,” Schmidt-Rohr said. “While water would freeze in the larger channels, it would continue to diffuse in the smaller-diameter pores.”

Schmidt-Rohr added that additional analysis is needed to determine how the cylinders connect through the membrane.

Ames Laboratory, celebrating its 60th anniversary in 2007, is operated for the Department of Energy by Iowa State University. The Lab conducts research into various areas of national concern, including the synthesis and study of new materials, energy resources, high-speed computer design, and environmental cleanup and restoration.

The article, “Parallel cylindrical water nanochannels in Nafion fuel-cell membrane” by Schmidt-Rohr and Chen, is published in Nature Materials.