Tourism product owners in North West are now making sustainability and green investments their top priorities. They are adopting innovative practices like using renewable energy, conserving water, and managing waste to ensure that every adventure leaves a green footprint for guests and holidaymakers.
Sustainability and green investments in tourism have become buzz words in the sector emphasising greener solutions to limiting the carbon foot print of tourism product owners and guests.
Sustainability Manager at Sun City Resort Lwazi Mswelanto says, “Sustainability with Sun City comes a very long way. As you know we are good in sustainability, when it comes to water conservation, energy management, waste management in the resort… By 2025 the entire group Sun International us going on zero waste to landfill, of which Sun City. has made a big progress. when you look back at where it was and currently we are sitting at almost 80% of our waste diverted from landfill.”
While most tourism activities come with a great carbon footprint, small and emerging tourism product owners are exploring new ways to make their products greener.
Leeto Experience’s Lehlohonolo Pitso explains, “So Leeto Experience is all about curated adventure tourism experiences…We are talking quad biking, horse riding boar cruises, zip lining… Wherever we travel to we make sure that we either leave the place better than we found it or we at least leave it as we found it… And yes with the Jeeps they have heavy carbon footprint, however, we are still a small medium enterprise but we are looking to change our fleet and obviously, over time that is the plan to go with electronic Jeeps.”
These green tourism initiatives also go a long way towards preserving local heritage. Lesego Odubeng, from Mphebatho Museum Tour Guide, says, “Beside the Museum, we have heritage sites, rain making rock, the wall of Kgamanyane where he always flogged by Paul Kruger… Our history is disappearing day by day due to things that happened back in the days because of our rich land. Just like I showed you about the rain making rituals, people don’t actually believe in making rain the way our ancestors used to. Even the creation story, different stories concerning the creation story, people don’t know the real truth. Africa is the mother land.”
With the festive season around the corner, all hands are on deck to introduce tourists to greener and more sustainable tourism offerings.
CEO of Tourism Business Council of South Africa, Tshifhiwa Tshivhengwa says, “We’ve been talking about greening tourism, sustainable tourism and many other terms that speak to sustainability. And we have been doing it. If you look at many tourism establishments, they provide their own water, as much as the energy we are getting there, we are trying to harness the energy from the sun to make sure that we can have energy for ourselves. we try to minimise, in terms of food waste and many other things and that why there were many funds available that one can apply to make sure that.”
Tourism product have committed to work towards realisation of green tourism.
