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SBC > LA21 > Initiatives > Business & Tourism |
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Sustainable Tourism
Stafford Borough's 'Sustainable Tourism Kit'Promoting Sustainable Tourism
Stafford Borough now has its own, completely original 'Sustainable Tourism Kit', launched recently at the Green Awards Presentation Ceremony on October 3rd 2002.
The Stafford Borough Sustainable Tourism Kit consists of a 'bag for life', containing a wide range of environmentally-friendly products, plus resources and promotional materials to encourage both tourist businesses and their visitors to be more environmentally friendly.
Aiming at this stage at Stafford Borough tourism businesses, we hope to extend the initiative beyond this, with our partners to, support sustainable tourism across the County.
The Pack has been sponsored by the Stafford Tourism Bureau, Sainsbury's (Stafford) and Stafford Borough Council.
It has been designed in house by Sebastian Pearce, with help from children from St Michaels' First School, Stone and was the brainchild of Borough Council officers, Karen Davies, Local Agenda 21 Co-ordinator and Chris Paine, Tourism Officer.
As well as products like recycled toilet and kitchen rolls, fairtrade tea and coffee and low energy light bulbs, the 'Kit' includes place mats for dining rooms or bedrooms, with pictoral reminders about how we can all be more environmentally friendly, as well as a stand up A5 cards with typical messages including:
'If your towel needs a scrub, pop it in the tub! To help save our environment only the towels left in the bath will be laundered'
and
'If no-one's in sight, turn out the light! One normal light bulb left on overnight creates enough CO2 to fill twenty party balloons'
The Sustainable Tourism Kit aims to encourage the tourism sector to demonstrate responsibility in caring for our environment, and builds on the recent addition of a Sustainable Tourism Category in the Borough's annual Green Awards.
The 'Sustainable Tourism Kit' was handed over by John Gregory of Sainsbury's, to Ann Wood of the Stafford Tourism Bureau at the Green Awards 2002 Awards Ceremony.
But why is it so important to encourage more sustainable tourism?
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tourism employs 1.75 million people in 125,000 businesses in the UK
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tourism accounts for one in six of all new jobs created in the last ten years
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it is worth £53 billion a year and
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tourism attracted almost 30 million visitors to Britain last year
This scale of activity means there is potential for the tourism industry to do great harm to our environment, heritage, culture and local communities.
Yet there are great opportunities for tourism to make a significant contribution towards a more sustainable society.
Locally, Stafford Borough and Staffordshire County Councils are already promoting more sustainable tourism through the Borough's Tourism Strategy, in the draft Staffordshire Tourism Action Plan, via partnership working with the Stafford Tourism Bureau and on projects like the 'Taste of Staffordshire Awards'.
This new initiative has been set up as part of the Borough Council's commitment to sustainable development and Local Agenda 21and follows on from the recent World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg.
The 'Sustainable Tourism Kit' will be distributed to all members of the Stafford Tourism Bureau free of charge and will then be made available for a low cost to other tourism businesses. It is hoped that the initiative will become adopted county-wide in the future.
Contact details:
Karen Davies, Local Agenda 21 Co-ordinator, Stafford Borough Council, 619408
Chris Paine, Tourism Officer, Stafford Borough Council, 619346