Green doesn’t mean Sustainable (does it?)
25. Sep, 2008
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Cape Town – Is your business green, or sustainable, or both? If you don’t know the difference – or care – chances are your customers are starting to, and green may not be good enough any more.
Green is getting a lot of attention these days, and not just if you’re in rainy Cape Town. In travel and tourism, carbon-offsets are growing in popularity and availability, and water-wise initiatives in hotels and guesthouses are becoming commonplace. Consumer and industry demand for ‘green’ products and services is growing at a rate such that it’s fast becoming the mainstream expectation.
However, in marketing its greenness, the SA travel and tourism industry is starting to overreach and it’s a hazardous trend. I’m not talking about the cynical practice of “greenwashing” to intentionally deceive, but the improper use of terms that confuses consumers and reflects an industry grappling to understand the concepts itself.
How often do we see environmental initiatives described as “responsible” business practice? And what about “sustainability”? The recent announcement made by Hilton Hotels that they had committed to “sustainability” included a host of energy savings and carbon footprint reduction initiatives. Hilton are certainly to be praised, but care for the environment is only one of the three aspects to the triple bottom line that characterises “sustainability”. Environmental alongside social and economic practices. What about buying locally, paying a fair price for goods and services, fair wages to employees, investments in skills development, community engagement and giving expression to local cultures and traditions? We don’t know, but they’ve chosen the term “sustainability” to refer only to their environmental practices (and they’re hardly the only ones) – are they overreaching in their PR? Or just confused?
Adding to the confusion is the 2010 FIFA Soccer World CupTM and its Green Goal 2010 programme. This was first conceived for the 2006 World Cup in Germany as an environmental initiative to reduce the impact of the massive event on the environment. Carried over to South Africa, the programme carries the name “Green” but explicitly makes reference to the social and economic aspects of sustainability as well, for which the South African LOC is to be applauded. In practice, this is shaping up to improve the legacy of the World Cup, but it adds to the confusion of the term – is “green” the same as “sustainable”? No. Except when the answer is “Yes”, apparently.
These are just two of many instances of the confusion of the terms “green” and “sustainable”, and if you add in the term “responsible”, which in tourism implies the three principles of sustainability are being followed, it gets even murkier.
This kind of confused terminology highlights our unfamiliarity as an industry, and the general confusion in our economy. Pity the poor consumer, who we ask to make sense of all this mess…And given that the majority of inbound tourists from SA’s top five overseas markets (the big spenders) want to know that the money they spend on their holiday is going to benefit the people living in the destination they visit, it’s starting to affect their choice of destination, experiences and products.
[Next week: what's being done about it, and what you can do]
About Blogger
KURT ACKERMANN writes, researches and consults on strategy, business models and brands for organisations adapting to globalisation and technological change. He is the proprietor of the Afrikatourism blog for responsible travel at afrikatourism.blogspot.com.
My name is Muzi Mohale a full-time travel blogger, your host at Travelwires.com responsible for all editorial on this blog. I blog about the travel and tourism industry in Africa. Apart from blogging about tourism, I also run 
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