Plastic Bags
The ever increasing use of plastic shopping bags is starting to have a huge environmental impact world wide. As a business we have decided to join the world wide push to reduce plastic bag consumption by donating our time to administer a plastic bag reduction programme in Kaikoura. There are several reasons that plastic bags are a problem:
-Their tendancy to become wind-blown and get into our environment, especially our oceans and water ways.
-The length of time it takes to for the bags to break down once in the environment. Estimated to be between 200 and 500 years.
-The tendancy for wildlife including many marine mammals and birds to ingest or become entangled in the bags.
- The biggest problem lies in the shear amount currently being used world wide. Most estimates put annual world wide usage at somewhere between 800 million and one trillion bags a year. Even if only 1% of these are getting into our environment, it is easy to see how the problem has and will continue to compound until we change our habits.
KAIKOURA FANTASTIC, NO PLASTIC!
"Kaikoura Fantasic, No Plastic!" is the name of Kaikoura's plastic bag reduction programme that we are heavily involved with. The programme was initatied by the Kaikoura Enhancement Trust which was set up by the the Kaikoura District Council. Funding was sought from Zero Waste New Zealand, The Canterbury Waste Committee, Pub Charities and The Kaikoura District Council. As a result 10,000 reusable printed bags were purchased. As part of the programme a free reusable bag was distributed to each household and a reusable bag was also distributed to each primary and high school student at presentations held at the schools. The remainder of the bags are being sold to the community through local businesses at a price of each.
As a nature based tourism business we have started to incorporate sustainability concepts into all aspects of our business. This page is intended to show the efforts we are making to move towards sustainability from the small steps to the larger. We are hoping that by publishing this information it will benefit other small operators in their own endeavours to become more sustainable. This page is a work in progress.
