For more than two decades, his was a voice in the wilderness and although Eric Ricaurte started his company, Greenview, to focus on sustainability practices in hospitality, in 2008, the Singapore-based executive has been involved in the space for as long as he can remember.

In fact, you could say his roots in sustainability were planted from childhood.

Born in Mexico to an Ecuadorian father and American mother, Ricaurte was raised in the small town of Toledo, Ohio. “My mother was a maverick greenie – she started urban farming, we grew our own peppers, tomatoes, herbs, blackberries, we were always in nature.”

But it was a student stint in Costa Rica that set Ricaurte on his path. “I was working in an eco-lodge, in the north-eastern corner of the country. There were no boats and phones and that opened up the sustainability door for me.”

At hospitality school in Cornell University, he focused on the subject of sustainability. “We did a field trip to Belize, it was a 20-room eco-lodge in a massive forest. It was community-based tourism at its heart. I asked, how do you guys support yourself? Turns out it was the Wisconsin electric power plant that was an early adopter of carbon offsetting in the early 90s.

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