Southland and Fiordland is a beautiful part of the world and caring for the environment around this amazing countryside has become of high priority for the Ascot Park Hotel.

General Manager Peter Ridsdale took the initiative in August 2007 to start the Hotel on its Sustainability journey. Inspired by a sustainability audit, sponsored by Venture Southland and completed by a local environmental champion, Carolyn Dean of “Future Genz”, the resultant plan has helped to minimise the Hotel’s impact on the environment, for the benefit of future generations.

Over the last 3 years Peter and the team at the Ascot Park Hotel have taken the Hotel down a path that sees it locally as a leader of green friendly practises and often we are asked to share our experiences with others in the industry who may be starting their journey.

If you would like to share in our experiences then read on and see where our Sustainability Road Trip has taken us.

AUGUST 2007-

It all started when Peter attended the annual TRENZ Tourism conference where the theme “Turning Green Into Gold” reinforced the fact that New Zealand Tourism needed to tidy up its environmental act.  “There was a hum in industry at the time and it was all green. The message was loud and clear be in, our miss out”, says Peter

Having returned from the conference, Venture Southland an industry support body that combines the resources of 3 regional councils ran a series of environmental workshops. Peter attended these and one of the outcomes was the opportunity to complete and environmental audit.

Once completed Pete had a significant amount of food for thought. The obvious starting point for the Hotel was in the area of recycling. The Hotel was sending roughly 10 tonnes of waste a month direct to landfill and the incentive to recycle was irresistible given that a local business called Southern Enterprise had started to recycle plastic, paper & cardboard, key waste components for the Hotel.

The implementation of the re-cycling program was as simple as saying “Go” a letter went out to the Hotel team and the next day re-cycling bins were in place. In the first month we sent 4 tonnes of rubbish to be re-cycled with the money saved from the landfill tip charges being put towards the pay of 2 part-time re-cyclers. It was a great start.

August 2009-

A year later the Hotel was re-cycling food waste, oil, paper, cardboard, printer cartridges, plastic, fluorescent tubes, tin & aluminium.

Another networking meeting lead to an introduction with ECCA, a government department dedicated to energy saving... they helped us into an energy audit of the hotel which started the Hotel on the power saving track! From their feedback changes were made predominately in the area of lighting choice and globes. The audit highlighted potential savings of $11,000 - $17,000 per year by switching to more energy efficient lighting. In the first 3 months of 2010 the Hotel saved 27,000KW of Electricity over the same period of the previous year.

“Every week something new crops up as an opportunity to do something a little better to reduce our carbon footprint. Everyone who works here, understands that we have a role to play in becoming more sustainable. In fact we now know that everything we do impacts on the environment in some way and our actions in the Hotel and in the community show that month by month we are getting better at what we do." Peter says.

The Hotel has been tracking monthly its costs which has allowed it to measure our savings and has provided the incentive to keep moving forwards with our sustainability initiatives as it clearly indicates where improvements have been made.

Additional work completed on Health and Safety allowing the Hotel to be awarded a level two reduction on our ACC premiums.

Compiling information and photographs of our work during the redevelopment of the Hotel and since the beginning of our sustainability trip proved invaluable when it came to applying for our Environmental Rating with Qualmark in September of 2009.

The assistance provided to us in the Qualmark support documentation for sustainability proved valuable in finding out what information we should be compiling and why.

“It was simply a great result for the Hotel to be awarded environmental Gold from Qualmark for our efforts in the Hotel” and being the 100th tourism business in New Zealand to do so allowed the Hotel to enjoy great press in a number of publications throughout New Zealand.

In 2010 our most recent trips on the sustainability road include:

*     Working with the local community by providing sponsorship e.g.) Southern Steel

*     Networking with groups just starting on trip in doing so helping then on their sustainable   journey

*     Recording our journey on educational websites

*     Negotiations with the Department of Conservation on defining a suitable community based project that will benefit the local environment have also been progressing and this has been providing the Hotel with some tangible ideas for taking its sustainability to a higher level! This is a space to watch in the future!

*     Inclusion of sustainability issues for discussion at monthly staff and management meetings.

*     Applying for local and National sustainability awards

*     A much stronger focus on producing press releases and newsletters so that we start capitalising financially for our efforts. This has related in a number of articles being written in National magazines

*     Increased communication to customers through newsletters, sustainability workshops,   websites and liaison with Venture Southland.

*     Provision for a limited green conference option introduced at the Hotel.

So if you are visiting Southland and you do need accommodation why not book at the Ascot Park hotel we are greener than most!

Living Green: General Manager Peter Ridsdale adopting environmentally friendly concepts at the Hotel.