As mentioned in the previous post I had a great stay at The Greenhouse Backpacker Hostel in the middle of Melbourne’s city centre. I spoke to some staff to find out how green they actually are and they surprised me when pointing out they even have an expert on sustainable solutions amongst them; Adrian Booke, 32 years old and from Melbourne. In between the checking in and checking out of people around the world (love all the accents!), he found some spare time to answer my following questions…
What’s your job in The Greenhouse Backpacker Hostel?
“I’m the Assistant Manager.”
Do you consider you’re having The Best Job in the World?
“Yes! It’s a great mix of workmates that hang around for a while and become great mates, awesome guests that come and go and provide excitement and challenges from day to day and industry people that make for good times at all the industry parties and so on.
Another benefit is that once I look after the guests in Melbourne, when it comes time for me to travel, they look after me. Eg, one guest surprised me with free tickets to Australia vs Croatia in the last World Cup in Germany!! One flight later I was there!”
Which goals do you have for The Greenhouse Backpacker Hostel referring to sustainability?
“To become a leader in our industry with regards to sustainability and climate change.
Furthermore to constantly monitor our waste and resource usage and to be active, creative and intelligent about minimising them.”
What are the improvements that you introduced in The Greenhouse Backpacker Hostel so far?
“Among many others the following:
- Conducted carbon audit
- Water saving showerheads
- Recycled office paper and ink cartridges
- Use an environmentally conscious Print company for our marketing
- Promote local business by shopping at the local markets
- Encourage environmentally sustainable activities i.e. bike hire, walking tours, provide sports equipment for games in the park
- Promote riding to work for staff
- Send lost property to charity groups for the homeless
- Completed the Community Waste Wise Program (a waste auditing program that ensures our recycling program is effective)
- Participating in the ‘Grow Me the Money’ program. This helps us to continuously monitor, refine and improve our sustainability practices.”
What are the difficulties that you come across when trying to change/ implement a (new) product or service that benefits the “Green Commitment”?
“This can be divided in three obstacles:
The first one has to be the initial cost of implementing greener products and devices throughout the property.
Although we believe that once these energy saving items start paying for themselves, the money saved can be used to expand our sustainability program into currently unaffordable areas.
Secondly, promoting the ideas behind green practices can sometimes be hard to get across to some guests from areas of the world that perhaps have less exposure to this type of education. We are working on a sustainable knowledge program that we will implement into the hostel in the near future. This will be in the form of branded visual information posters which will be easy to understand and promote sustainable practices in the hostel and beyond.
Last but not least helping to steer the industry into the green way of thinking can be a challenge especially when many tour operators and accommodation providers struggle financially to stay afloat in such hard times as we’re in today.
We are working on becoming leaders in this area and hopefully we can become recognised as a benchmark for others to base their own sustainable programs on. We are certainly willing to help our industry peers and even our competitors if it means building a sustainable local/State/Australian wide tourism industry!”
How does your ideal vision look for the Greenhouse Backpacker Hostel in five years from now?
“Let’s start with a green rooftop garden with species of plants that are endemic to Melbourne and its surrounds and are naturally low water consumers. We are already in talks with the Victorian Indigenous Nursery Co-op for advice in implementing such a garden.
We will look at installing rainwater tanks in the rooftop garden and installing a fast flow compost to recycle food waste and to avoid the need for fertilizers in the future garden.
Change starts with education, so all staff members will be trained on our sustainability program and able to actively promote it where possible.
Furthermore all of our current ideas will be trialed, implemented and hopefully at the maintenance stage by then. Examples are retro fitted lighting and de-lamping of areas, better water saving devices, energy saving hand dryers and so on.”
Some inspiring words from Adrian to the world:
“Treat the Earth well. It was not given to you by your parents. It was loaned to you by your children.”
Posted from Cairns with Vodafone Mobile Internet on my notebook
