carbonneutraltourism.co.uk

17th – 20th July 2008

Henham Park, Southwold, Suffolk

Working towards and greener festival.

The ground breaking Latitude Festival returns to the sunrise coast in Suffolk for its incredible third year. Nestled in the historic and beautiful surroundings of Henham Park Estate, Southwold, and taking place on 17th – 20th July, organisers Festival Republic are promising another truly spectacular event.

Teaming up with London’s Arcola Theatre, Latitude are working towards a greener festival. With environmental issues at its core, Latitude are pleased to announce that this year’s Theatre Arena will be a completely fuel cell powered stage. Arcola will be providing state of the art low energy lighting including LED and a Hydrogen Fuel Cell to power the stage. The fuel cell operates almost silently and will produce nothing but electricity and clean water.

This ground-breaking advancement in technology will bring down the carbon footprint of the festival and lessen the event’s impact on its immediate surroundings and the world’s climate as a whole.

The Arcola Theatre is a converted factory in East London and one of the UK’s leading independent venues. This partnership with Latitude is part of Arcola’s extensive sustainability programme – Arcola Energy – which along with partners in the Mayor of London’s Greening London Theatres initiative is driving the eco-culture frontier.

Over the weekend Theatre Arena at Latitude is a buzzing hotbed of creativity and inspiration, hosting a wealth of bespoke productions and performances exclusive to the festival. Some of the biggest names in contemporary, physical, classical, performance and local theatre, including The Royal Court, the Bush Theatre, nabokov, and Paines Plough, are coming to the Theatre Arena. It really has something for everyone; provoking thought, emotions, laughs and entertainment all weekend long. As well as powering the arena The Arcola Theatre will present a series of short but perfectly formed writer-led plays The Miniaturists. Each piece is no longer than 15 minutes, and the dizzying mix makes every event as various and unpredictable as life itself.

Latitude and Arcola will be supported by the London Hydrogen Partnership, Thomas Engineering & ETC.

Tesco the UK market leader in terms of ‘grocery stores’ is starting to introduce ‘carbon scores’ on some of their products to highlight how many grams of CO2 were produced during their production, packaging and disposal (source: Daily Telegraph).

Hello Scotland Is First UK Destination Management Company to Win Accreditation for its CarbonNeutral® operations

A Scottish destination management company has become the first in the UK to be given CarbonNeutral® operations accreditation.

Hello Scotland, which offers handcrafted, luxurious packages to corporate groups visiting Scotland, is working hard to tackle offsetting its carbon footprint in a number of ways, and has been now been awarded CarbonNeutral® operations status by The CarbonNeutral Company.

Although business travellers have come particularly under fire for their carbon footprint, Hello Scotland believes it has found a way of addressing the balance of continuing to offer unique elite and exclusive incentive packages to the corporate sector, while tackling the concerns of impact upon the environment.

Ambassador for Hello Scotland, Bill Thomson, explains: “Being a destination management company, we have no alternative but to use coaches to transport clients, and it’s out with our control as to how clients get to Scotland, but we now record every mile that our trips cover across the country and we then offset this through a number of selected initiatives to promote sustainable energy through The CarbonNeutral Company.”

Bill reveals Hello Scotland was awarded this status after submitting company data to The CarbonNeutral Company, including all of Hello Scotland’s commuting figures, mileage, number of clients, where they were all staying and so on. The company’s annual operations carbon footprint was calculated - and they’ve now managed to offset this for two years running.

A key part of offsetting their carbon footprint was mitigating changes within the company, such as reducing paper wastage by more than 40% over the past year and introducing a rigorous double-sided printing policy, as well as allocating ‘Green Champions’ on a monthly basis to take responsibility for waste disposal each week.

Further targets for this year are to not only invest in more recycled stationery, but to also reduce paper usage by a further 30% by creating greener client facing concepts, and Bill says a priority is to communicate with suppliers to look at ways they can work together to promote greener options.

By bringing their efforts to the attention of suppliers – and clients - Hello Scotland hopes to at least make them more aware of reducing their carbon footprint, with the aim this will encourage more people to do their bit to preserve the environment and make Scotland a sustainable destination in ecological terms.

“We certainly don’t want to push what we’re doing into people’s faces and we know there’s a lot of scepticism over CarbonNeutral® operations status, but small changes make a big difference - it’s simply not about paying a nominal figure to offload the guilt.

“On our trips, our clients get to see in practice what sustainability is all about – for example, the whisky distilleries that use natural resources but re-use and recycle wherever they can.”

For those clients that are keen to do their bit and get involved with Hello Scotland’s efforts, they’ll soon be given the choice of a ‘Green Upgrade’.

Bill explains: “We’re going to be offering options that are more ecologically friendly, such as using hotels that are more ecologically aware, and we’ll be able to let clients know the difference they’ll be making by upgrading to this level.”

In receiving carbon neutral status, this has also had a knock-on effect in Hello Scotland becoming much more involved in a national awareness campaign, highlighting not only the benefits to the environment, but the cost-savings that businesses can make.

Another big step for the company this year, as well as finding new ways to reduce their own carbon footprint and offset those made by their clients, is a grading from Green Tourism Business Scheme.

“This is really important for us and we’ll be working to meet the criteria of the scheme and the assessment it entails.”

So what set Hello Scotland on this challenge in the first place? “Through one of our team (Project Manager, Claire Scott), we have close links with an environmental board in Canada,” says Bill, “where they’re well ahead in terms of being ecologically aware – and that was one of the stimuli that gave us the idea of going doing this route.

Bill concludes: “We recognise that we have an integral responsibility in tackling the ever-present threats of climate change - and we’re very proud of the fact that we’re now recognised as being a CarbonNeutral® operation.”

National tourism agency, VisitBritain, launches a new programme – Green Start – to help accommodation providers and visitor attractions in England take the first steps towards becoming sustainable businesses.

VisitBritain aims to encourage a rapid, widespread and significant increase in the adoption of sustainable tourism principles, while avoiding the burden of too much bureaucracy and, as part of a three-month pilot, is waiving the usual £25 cost for the first 500 businesses to register to the programme. Participation in Green Start provides tourism managers and operators with a stepping stone towards accreditation by a validated sustainable accreditation scheme.

Jason Freezer, VisitBritain’s sustainable tourism project manager, says: “VisitBritain is committed to encouraging sustainable businesses. However nearly two-thirds tell us they need more guidance on developing their business in that way. Green Start is an initial step in helping more of our tourism businesses improve their existing practices and signal to visitors that they recognise the increasing importance and value of sustainable good practice.”

Using a simple online self-assessment tool, participants must meet a code of conduct, commit to four fundamental sustainability requirements and, over a period of two years, meet or work towards at least 23 relevant ‘good practices’ from a total menu of 50. These could include insulating buildings and water tanks, using low-energy lighting, collecting rainwater, using locally-sourced produce or promoting eco-friendly travel such as cycling.

In return, participants will gain a basic identification on  and, signalling to consumers that they recognise the importance and value of sustainable good practice. VisitBritain will provide them with additional best practice guidance, drawing on advice from national experts and signposting businesses to regional resources. The agency aims to have 2,500 businesses signed up to Green Start in the first year.

By introducing the entry-level programme, VisitBritain aims to prepare businesses for more formal accreditation under an existing and well-established sustainable certification scheme, such as the Green Tourism Business Scheme (www.green-business.co.uk). VisitBritain will add its endorsement to businesses in these schemes and give their quality assessed participants full marketing benefits, both online and offline.

To mark the launch, consumers in the UK and abroad – who are increasingly exploring sustainable practices when planning their trips – can now search for around 750 of these ‘green’ accommodation providers and attractions on visitbritain.com and enjoyengland.com.

VisitBritain has also identified the few conflicts in its current national quality assessments standards and is addressing the process of integrating sustainable principles into them. Its activities in the sustainable arena are part of VisitBritain’s current strategy to promote sustainable businesses and encourage responsible visitors through marketing, industry engagement, leading by example and supporting Government’s sustainable agenda.

Cascade Green is an Australian beer with high ‘eco-credentials’, which include using bio-degradable vegetable inks on the packaging and the cartons are made out of materials which are 100% recyclable. Over the past six years the brewery have also reduced their energy usage by 16% and water usage by 30% per unit of production. They have also won a number of environmental awards.

The Crown Estate has agreed to purchase a prototype of the world’s largest wind turbine.  The Britannia turbine has been designed for offshore use and can generate 7.5MW of power (and measures 175 meters in height).  By 2020 the Government want to develop 33 gigawatts of power from offshore wind farms.

Glasgow Caledonian University were commissioned in 2007 to assess whether Government initiatives for wind farms in Scotland are likely to have an economic impact on Scottish tourism.   The report can be read here.

Carbon Catablog have recently interviewed Tome Arnold the founder and chief Environment Officer of US based company TerraPass.

The Eco Lodge, in Lincolnshire has been recommended for the the Times Green Spaces award.

Natur Cymru presented by Iolo Williams is a new six part series being shown on S4C.  Viewer will be taken on a wildlife journey across Wales‘ inspiring wetlands, mountains, forests and coastline.