Sustainable tourism is trendy, but hard to define and recognize. In the ten-week EU ECO-TANDEMeducation and training courses that Heather took in the spring of 2021, they defined it this way:
“Sustainable tourism takes full account of its current and future economic, social, and environmental impacts, addressing the needs of visitors, the industry, the environment, and host communities.”
These values have always been important to us, and even more so after learning more about the impact that we can make. Here are some highlights of our sustainability practices.
Our Environmental Practices:
We have partnered with Treedom, the “first platform in the world that allows you to plant a tree from a distance and follow the story of the project online.” For each guest stay booked directly, we will plant a tree on your behalf and virtually gift it to you so that you can follow its journey.
While we do provide coffee pods to guests as a convenience amenity, they are fully compostable.
We encourage guests to drink our tap water rather than single-use bottles.
We use LED light bulbs and half-flush toilets.
We use Eco-friendly cleaning products.
As guests use our small toiletries (made in Italy) we will replace them with large refillable containers to reduce plastic waste.
We request that our guests recycle.
You may notice that we purchased a lot of “up-cycled” furniture from UP Italian Upcycled Furniture in Civitanova Marche.
Our appliances are energy efficient.
We have reduced the items in our welcome kit to reduce food waste.
Our guest book is digital, saving countless trees with each update. :)
How we Support our Local Community:
We have always focused on locally-made products, and as we replace items — taking life cycle awareness into account — we source, to the best of our ability, Made in the Marche or Made in Italy products.
Much of our furniture is made in the Marche, especially from Poltrona Frau and Parigiani in Tolentino!
Most of our bedspreads are made in Italy.
We buy art from local artists.
We collaborate with MarcheCraft to promote memorable guest experiences with local artisans.