Our Eceat Finland certification and the STF label were important milestones in our work on sustainable tourism, but I always say that this is where the work begins.
And indeed, three development projects under our development program have already been completed and there are more sustainability measures scheduled for several years to come.
In this context, we are now working on three important issues, namely the STF indicators, the Glasgow Climate Declaration and the carbon footprint calculation.
STF indicators
One of the tasks in the Sustainable Travel Finland work was to calculate and report our own STF indicators. Krepelin’s own can be found here. We are proud to say that Krepelin does many things well compared to other STF organisations, but of course there is room for improvement. This is another reason why this STF work is ongoing.
Glasgow Climate Declaration
The World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) is the United Nations agency responsible for promoting responsible, sustainable and inclusive tourism accessibility.
On 4 November 2021, the UNWTO published the so-called Glasgow Climate Declaration, which aims to increase the climate ambition of tourism stakeholders and ensure action to support the global commitment to halve tourism emissions by 2030 and achieve net zero emissions as soon as possible before 2050. For more information click here.
Krepelin joined this initiative 31.5.2022. Information about that can be found on this page.
On 22 September 2022, we attended the kickoff of the Finnish participants in the Climate Declaration to review the recent events, agreed on the formation of a steering group and heard about the current state of development of the carbon footprint calculation.
Carbon Footprint and Climate action plan
Agreement on the principles for calculating the carbon footprint of Finnish tourism businesses is underway by Visit Finland. In Krepelin, we have already made our own preliminary calculation and the 2021 version is available here and 2022 version here. When comparing the two reports you can see that our carbon footprint increased from 2021 to 2022 and the reason was the big renovation we had in the ground floor of the main building, when we turned the never-before-renovated three apartments into historical suites. After that we’ve begun to settle to a more lower footprint.
A pilot version of Visit Finland’s carbon footprint calculator is also available for anyone to test here.
Second, participation in the Glasgow Declaration program requires that the organisation has its own Climate action plan and I’m happy to report that our first version is now available in here.
Finally, to be honest: the current increase in inflation, especially in Finnish electricity prices has encouraged and even forced us to take new kinds of measures. For example: we normally take our summer apartments D2 and D3 out of use, but now we also took D4 and D5, because all of them have electricity heating. Taking these out of use is also justified, because inflation is also impacting our customers and traveling seems to be one of the first ones people stop doing when choices need to be made.
However, I’m confident we’ll survive this, one, too, and will emerge even more sustainable.
Have a sustainable 2023!
Harri Alatalo
Sustainability Officer at Kiinteistö Oy Krepelin
PS. Interested in getting a ballpark figure of our personal carbon footprint? Check out this handy table.