Rabbie’s Small Group Tours has been named as one of Scotland’s most community conscious and environmentally sustainable companies.
The travel company has won the Scottish Business in the Community Award in recognition of its efforts to support rural communities, travel sustainably and make a contribution toward tackling climate change.
It was also awarded the Big Tick Climate Change Award for
environmental initiatives.
Join guided walks across the wild landscape of the Fforest Fawr Geopark in Carmarthenshire during the Geopark
Festival starting next weekend. The walks will be held on May 26 and 27 and the festival runs until June 10. Half day walks cost £2, full days a fiver - book in advance. Go to www.fforestfawrgeopark.org.uk/geopark-festival-2012 for more info.
Ecotourism group Inkaterra Peru has been named overall winner of the global Tourism for Tomorrow conservation award in Japan this week. The hotel protects 38,000 acres of rainforest in the Amazon basin and 25 acres of cloud forest within the Machu Picchu Historical Sanctuary. It also conducts biodiversity research, providing much needed scientific data and species benchmarks for plants, birds and amphibians in some of Peru’s most sensitive habitats. Creating sustainable tourism in a former mining region of Norway has seen Destination Røros win the Tourism for Tomorrow destination stewardship section. The former mining town of Røros has become a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Destination Røros is also a pilot project for Norway’s country-wide Sustainable Tourism Initiative.Asia’s Banyon Tree group has won the big business award in recognition of its work in local communities and for its environment programme that includes coral reef protection and planting thousands of trees every year around each of its resorts. And Saunders Hotel Group in the has scooped Tourism for Tomorrow’s community award for its efforts to support disadvantaged people in Boston. These efforts range from helping to provide affordable housing to supplying shelters with food left over from banquets.
A £6.9 million scheme to get visitors out of their cars and into greener forms of transport has been launched in the
Lake District.
The GoLakes Travel programme aims save up to 11,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions by 2015 - and create 100 jobs.
It concentrates on the villages of Grasmere, Ambleside, Windermere, Kendal, Hawkshead and Coniston.
There’ll be better cycleways, more bus stops, a low emission car hire network and an electric bike service.
Hepburn and Bogie’s wallowing co-star in The African Queen has come out of the dry dock and will live out her retirement in Florida.
She’s the real deal. The African Queen was launched in 1912 from England’s Lytham shipbuilding yard.
She was called - appropriately - The Livingstone and served the British East Africa Rail Company until 1968 shuttling cargo, great white hunters and mercenaries along the Ruki River, deep in the northwestern Democratic Republic of the Congo.
To take a ride on this megastar (OK I’m a huge fan of the movie) go to calypsosailing.com
The Selous Safari Company in Tanzania is taking part in the global Pack For A Purpose scheme encouraging visitors to bring essential supplies to rural areas. In this case, safari guests at its Jongomero Camp and Ras Kutani are bringing in medical and educational supplies. The safari company is also providing desks, books and uniforms to village schools near its camps.
A scheme to encourage home owners to think sustainably has been launched by West Country agency Helpful Holidays. Cottages entering the scheme have nearly 70 boxes to tick before they get to carry a green tree symbol. These measures range from being energy and water efficient energy to managing the local environment.
Helpful Holidays’ boss Moray Bowater said; “Our offices are in beautiful Dartmoor National Park. We love our region and being environmentally aware is second nature to us. We recognise the unpredictable consequences of climate change and want to reduce the contribution running our business may make, as well as encourage our home owners and holiday makers to think more sustainably.”
Some of the holiday homes qualifying for the Green Cottage scheme are two cottages sleeping four near Honiton in East Devon. Converted from barns, Whitcombe Cottage
For larger families or groups of friends The Hay Loft
For more info about the Green Cottages scheme look at
Take the train to Germany for a hiking tour along the 65km-long Rhine Gorge with On Foot Holidays.
The route passes by 20 castles, vineyards and UNESCO-protected villages. The holiday from May to October for eight nights costs from £670pp plus from £121 for train rides from London to Bingen.
Hostels in the HostelBookers’ network will switch off power for Earth Hour on March 31. At 8.30pm UK time, people and businesses in 135 countries will switch off for an hour to show they care about our environment and want to halt global warming.
Hostelbookers’ boss David Smith says: “We understand that business has a key role to play in protecting our brilliant planet and so in support of this year’s event HostelBookers properties will promote Earth Hour 2012 worldwide.
Mosaic House hostel in Prague <http://www.hostelbookers.com/hostels/czech-republic/prague/55145/ will run candle lit tours of its green facilities. It’s the first property in the Czech Republic to use 100% renewable-source electricity, 100% biogas, run a water recycling system with heat recuperation and a fully electric car. It also has solar panels on the roof.
Green ideas from British Airways staff saved enough fuel to power 550 transatlantic flights last year.
Suggestions ranged from replacing glass with plastic wine bottles to descaling airport toilet pipes on aircraft (which not only saved £600,000 worth of fuel but also helped onboard loos flush more efficiently). In total, the ideas from pilots, cabin crew and ground staff saved more than £20 million in energy costs.
Jonathon Counsell, BA head of environment, said: “This really has been a team effort. It goes to show that small changes here and there can add up to significant savings.”
The airline meanwhile extended a trial of tripleO, a paint hoped to improve aerodynamics and lead to greater fuel efficiency. A Boeing 777 is to be coated, following a successful trial of a smaller Airbus A318.
The airline aims to reduce net carbon emissions by 50 per cent before 2050.
