Environmental Gold

Going Green – Achieving Environmental Gold

Thanks to Darragh O'Sullivan and Failte Ireland, my adventure company - Outdoors Ireland - has just achieved a gold award for green standards and enviromental awareness. We're now the first adventure company in Ireland to hold this award! I asked Darragh to write a blog about our journey to get here... Nathan

Over the past few years, Nathan had consulted with me on several aspects of Business Development for Outdoors Ireland, mainly in the areas of business direction and streamlining processes. When he asked me to take on this environmental project, I was more than happy to get stuck in.

I knew that Outdoors Ireland has very high professional standards across the board and was happy to help them achieve recognition for their high level of work. As well as that, Nathan genuinely counts himself extremely fortunate to work in such a stunning, relatively untainted area as Kerry, and values the conservation of its natural beauty. Equally, I appreciated that Nathan trusted my work, and would let me get on with things in my own way.

The task was to incorporate and demonstrate sound environmental practices across the company: in all processes and procedures, in dealing with clients and suppliers, and in company information. What this really meant was considering the environment in everything we do ourselves, as well as encouraging awareness in our clients and in anyone else we deal with, such as restaurants, hotels and shops. These practical principles would then form an Environmental Policy that we could stand over, and which would guide the company in future.

Office/Base
At the Outdoors Ireland brains-trust /nerve-centre / madhouse, we looked at any and all ways that we could improve things from a green point-of-view: using recycled paper, inks and other products; using more electronic forms of marketing and communication; being more responsible energy-wise etc.

Staff
We pulled apart all staff procedures to ensure that they are fully informed and pro-active on environmental issues. We put fail-safes in place to minimise waste, spread the Leave No Trace message, and encourage interaction and feedback from our customers on this area.

Clients
Our aim was to provide information to our clients so that they would be able to easily do their bit for the environment while taking part in our courses. Encouraging public transport or bikes while in the area, using responsible accommodation and local food providers, and making them aware of our own policies were some of the angles here.

Suppliers
We sent out questionnaires to the various hotels, restaurants, transport companies and so on that we regularly use, to find out what environmental practices they had. The idea here was to inform them of our view, encourage them to think more green, and to demonstrate that we are moving towards working exclusively with highly responsible companies.

So with all that and so much more done, we had our audit and the nervous wait for the result. Being honest, we felt we put a lot into it, but were probably on target for a high Silver award, so to get Gold was extremely satisfying. Knowing that Outdoors Ireland is the only adventure company in the country to get Gold makes it sweeter again (of course we would welcome all tourism providers being at gold standard but it’s nice for work to be recognised!).

Another good job done but also just the start of something. Part of our policy was to aim for continual improvement, as we look for in all areas of the business. So hopefully on-going work and communication with customers will keep Outdoors Ireland at the top of the pile when it comes to responsible tourism in Ireland.

Many thanks to Nathan for asking me to run this project. Huge thanks also to Stephen and Keri from the Green Tourism Business Scheme for their assistance and guidance during the process. For more information, see www.greentourism.ie

Darragh O’Sullivan