Luxurious indulgence and environmental awareness are uncomfortable bedfellows - unless you are lounging on an ethically made daybed in your sustainable bamboo super-cabin at Soneva Kiri, feeling good about being such an eco-warrior and forgetting how many tonnes of carbon you've clocked up getting there on the private jet.

Soneva Kiri is a new luxury resort on the Thai island of Koh Kood, off the southeast corner of the mainland. The island has a population of less than 2,000 and 70 per cent of its surface is tropical rainforest. The rest seems to be made up of white sandy beaches and clusters of fishermen's huts. Fishing was the sole career option for locals until Soneva Kiri came along; now sustainable construction is another. Once it opens, later this year, many local people will be working at the resort.

The owners of Soneva Kiri, Sonu and Eva Shivdasani, live the eco-lux life they sell. Long before Soneva was created, they were living it up with the jet set, he being an Eton and Oxford-educated entrepreneur from a wealthy Indian family and she being a feisty Swedish supermodel. Eva was keen on green living years before it was fashionable, so when they established their island home and first resort, Soneva Fushi in the Maldives, it became a testing ground for sustainable luxury. Having reported on the Soneva projects a year ago, Bricks and Mortar returned to see how the company's green promises were shaping up.

To its credit, Soneva Fushi has achieved carbon-neutral status and is pushing towards its target to use no energy sources derived from fossil fuels by 2010. The Shivdasanis have a method of carbon-offsetting that seems rather more serious than merely planting trees. Soneva Fushi contributes the equivalent of 2 per cent of its annual revenue to carbon offset payments run by the Converging World programme, which funds wind turbines in the Indian Ocean. The wind farm sells the energy to the national grid and uses the profits to back sustainable projects in less-developed countries that have yet to become heavily carbondependent. From organic vegetable gardens to deep-sea water-cooling systems, the resorts have received a catalogue of eco-awards for their green efforts.

Soneva is the most luxurious arm of Six Senses, the Shivdasanis' hotel and spa company. The two Soneva islands in the Maldives attract visitors such as Madonna and Philip Green. Soneva Kiri's discrete no-fuss atmosphere will doubtless appeal to a similar clientele.

Apart from its luxury hotel, the new resort also features 36 private villas costing between £1.2 and £2.2 million, some facing a private beach and some hidden away among tropical trees. Each villa is a complex of elaborate huts that includes airy living spaces, bedrooms, a children's hut with a water slide, a wine cellar and a startlingly stylish outdoor bathroom. Owners get a 20 per cent discount on hotel services, which means masseurs, housekeeping and a tree-top restaurant. Enthusiastic greenies can try out the hotel's eco-villa, an experimental project that has no electricity, a plant-covered roof and all sorts of low-fi features. Then they can pop back to their own mega-hut to watch a film on the big screen.

And the long-haul flight, the 45-minute private jet from Bangkok, and the speedboat ride to the island? Well, Six Senses does offset your very private flight emissions.

Aylesford (020-7351 2383): Cluttons Resorts (020-7584 3050), www.sixsenses.com/soneva-kiri

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