In May 2020, La Résidence signed up to Tourism Declares, an initiative that supports tourism businesses, organizations and individuals in declaring a climate emergency and taking purposeful action to reduce their carbon emissions as per the advice from The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to cut global carbon emissions to 55% below 2017 levels by 2030.
In signing the Climate Emergency Declaration, we made these five commitments.
2023 Climate Emergency Plan
We understand that tourism makes a large contribution to carbon emissions globally and while changing the way we run our bed and breakfast is not going to halt global temperature rises on its own, we feel a moral obligation to contribute.
We are also aware that the changes we make need to be in line with what our guests expect of an excellent bed and breakfast and listening to their aspirations and desires for a great holiday continues to be very important to us.
We feel that we have made a good start on our quest to become a more environmentally sustainable bed and breakfast and by the end of 2022 made the following changes to our business.
We have a plan for the next 18 months and some changes will be easier to achieve than others. These are shown in the list below.
No doubt there will be more changes than shown in the list above and we hope that our guests will inspire us with their own sustainable initiatives. We will be encouraging everyone to tell us what they think about our plans and hope to incorporate as many new ideas as we can.
We also hope that we can inspire others to make changes to the way they live, so that collectively we all contribute reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.
Despite our enthusiasm to move quickly there will be limits on what we can achieve, our very old house means that retrofitting heating systems and insulation is going to be difficult and expensive. Similarly, precise measurement of the emission changes we make is complex so we will do our best with the resources we have and continue to educate ourselves along the way. This doesn't mean we are going to be complacent, but it will require careful planning and persistence!
Interested in knowing more?
In educating ourselves we have found the issues around environmentally sustainability daunting but if you would like to imagine what our future could look like, please listen to former Australian Green Senator, Scott Ludlum's thought-provoking insights.
Economy or ecology? Why not both? | Scott Ludlam | TEDxPerth - YouTube