SUSTAINABILITY SIMPLIFIED
How to calculate your business’s climate impacts and actions you can take to reduce them.
By Erika Kazi, Kazi Sustainability Consulting, LLC
Much of the aerial adventure indus- try depends on the natural environ- ment to provide a safe and appealing space for our guests to play and explore. The safety and comfort of our spaces is less reliable than ever in our current climate-impacted world, though. There are major wildfires spreading across our forests, tropical storms flooding places they haven’t reached before, record-high temperatures across the country, and many folks feeling that “the next cell phone video I see showing a natural disaster could be filmed in my backyard.” Days of extreme weather can lead to business disruption and reduction of visitation for adventure parks. We want to get people outside, into trees, and into adventure. But what can we do to guarantee that our businesses have a future? There are actions you can take to contribute to a future that limits climate change and weather impacts. Though this begs a series of questions—Where do you start? What parts of your business are contributing most to this issue? What sustainability initiatives have the highest impact and return on investment?—some solutions are rela- tively simple to implement.
Here, we’ll look at the tools you need to understand your business’s climate impact and identify some “low-hanging fruit” you can adopt to start reducing your operation’s contributions to cli- mate change. Tracking Your Carbon Emissions
that carbon emissions are typically bro- ken down into three categories. These differentiate between business func - tions to help guide climate solutions, and are as follows: Scope 1: Scope 1 emissions are the GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions that come directly from your operations. These include oil (propane/natural gas) used to heat your facilities,
To calculate your business’s impact on the environment, it is useful to know
OVER THE SUMMER, API REACHED OUT TO READERS TO LEARN ABOUT THE SUSTAINABILITY-FOCUSED ACTIONS YOU ARE ALREADY TAKING AT YOUR OPERATIONS. HERE’S WHAT SOME OF YOU HAD TO SHARE: Lori Pingle, Owner, ZipZone Outdoor Adventures: “We are a certified ‘Green - Spot’ in the city of Columbus, Ohio, and we do evaluations to ensure we meet the re- quirements of the program each year. We try to make sustainable choices, but not at the detriment of our business.” Those choices include recycling, opening doors instead of using air conditioning whenever possible, and other small initiatives. The team at Ramblewild, Mass.: “We belong to a group of companies (Feronia Forests) created to promote forest conservation through sustainable business practices as an alternative to cutting down trees.” (The approach is called “sus- tainable full forestry.”) “We encourage guests to participate in these initiatives— leave no trace principles, recycling and composting programs, elimination of single-use plastics, etc.—as part of their experience with us.” Alice Tibbetts, President, North Shore Adventure Park, Minn.: “[We’re] trying to switch away from plastic for beverages.” The park encourages guests to bring refillable water bottles and provides water jugs for refills. If folks do bring plastic, recycling containers are everywhere, said Tibbetts, although not all guests avail themselves of the bins.
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