Touring Salt Spring Island in a Green Machine just got easier!

At Sustainable Tourism, we love showing people that sustainability doesn’t have to trade off with comfort or service, so we’re pumped to tell the world about Tour Salt Spring and how they are on the cutting edge of sustainable business and tourism innovation!

Tour Salt Spring was recently upgraded to Sustainable Tourism Gold Certification in recognition of their dedication to sustainability! Since 2015, they have reduced their fossil fuel use by 86%, with a 76% increase in business revenues! They achieved these impressive results mainly though the following actions:

• Purchasing a carbon-neutral tour vehicle that is “100% Veggie Powered”, aka powered by waste cooking oil, in addition to their first tour vehicle, which is a larger hybrid-electric van.
• Partnering with local restaurants to source the oil, which also reduces the amount of waste the restaurants are producing, and ensures a very local (and thus low-emissions) source of oil – a mutually beneficial relationship!
• Investing in the installation of a new solar array, which has the following benefits:
  • Offsets 100% of their office/home electricity use
  • Allows them to offer “Sunshine-Powered Tours” through the ability to plug their hybrid-electric van directly into their own micro-grid!
• Redesigning their tours to do more sightseeing with fewer kilometers driven, which allows them to do an entire tour on a single charge of the hybrid-electric van, and has resulted in a 27% jump in revenue with only a 14% increase in distance driven!