A new initiative is aiming to support up to 40 Rotorua businesses to become more sustainable and work towards being carbon neutral.
Enhancing the Environment would include a tailored workshop. Photo: 123RF
Regional tourism organisation, RotoruaNZ, was offering support packages worth more than $2000 in collaboration with the Rotorua Sustainability Charter.
RotoruaNZ destination manager Melissa Craig said Tiaki Taiao - Enhancing the Environment would include a tailored workshop and more focused consulting with the Charter's advisor, Desirae Kirby.
She said Kirby had a saying that really hit home. "Sustainability isn't a destination. You don't row your boat to the island and you're suddenly there on Sustainability Island. It's a continual journey and it's about always making improvements.
"So this programme's really designed - no matter where businesses are on their journey - that they will be able to make change."
Businesses would also commit to benchmark their carbon emissions and aim to lower them, she said.
"As a tourism and hospitality sector, this is the ... change that we've made and the commitment to our town and to our people, so two years down the track from now that would be an epic place to be to say 'Look, these 40 businesses, this is where it started out, this is the benchmark, and this is where we're tracking to now."
Rotorua Sustainability Charter advisor Desirae Kirby said they were looking forward to providing tailored support to the successful businesses.
"We look at every part of their business through the sustainability lens including - environmental, cultural, social, and economic. That way we can encourage business owners to work towards becoming quite holistically sustainable."
The Charter started in 1998 and was the oldest of its kind in Aotearoa, she said.
"At the heart of the Charter, we encourage and share sustainable best practice amongst our members and hope to inspire the wider Rotorua business community."
Expressions of interest have opened with the first successful applicants to start next month.