Sustainable Travel Finland program & EcoCompass Environmental system
Visit Finland’s Sustainable Travel Finland (STF) program is made for travel industry companies and destinations as a tool they can use as a tool to develop their sustainability work. We have agreed on the STF’s sustainable traveling principles and have applied for the program in the summer of 2022. Meanwhile, to get approved for the program, we continue to work on our sustainability and develop it further, while paying attention to the themes that are provided and demanded by the program. When we have completed the program for the first time, we will get a STF logo for us to use, which acts as concrete proof of our long-term sustainability work and efforts.
By agreeing to be part of the STF program, we promise to take the national sustainable travel principles into account and act according to them. We will take part i various sustainability training sessions as well as learn from the other material provided by Visit Finland to continually learn more and develop our business. At first, we bind our management as well as employees to the STF- program and create a realistic development plan for us that works as the bible for our responsibility work including a timeframe, budget, and targets for the future.
The STF program includes applying for a sustainability certificate that best works for us and works as a lead in our sustainability work, supporting the STF program. In the summer of 2022, we have decided to work on getting an EcoCompass Environmental Management System that also works as a certificate after completion. This best serves our needs as a company and allows us to consider sustainability in a practical way, from the company’s point of view. The EcoCompass environmental system allows us to concentrate on the most important sustainability themes that we decide on, based on an evaluation of our current sustainability state. We will be provided an expert who can help us on the way and tools that will be essential when developing our sustainability work further. The system includes 3rd person auditing; evaluating our sustainability efforts and reporting, which needs to be passed in order to get the certificate.
During the summer of 2022, we have built an environmental management system as well as filled in and maintained certification documents needed for STF and EcoCompass, which we still continue to work with. We have created targets in our environmental management system that are valid for the next three years. These targets will lead our sustainability work forward and we are committed to complying with them. They have been combined to our environmental pledge, which you can access here.
Out of these targets we have already rolled out a system that we use for environmentally friendly route planning. We have additionally optimized our storages’ capacity to decrease emissions. We have increased our office Homies as well as other stakeholder groups’ knowledge about our responsibility work in forms of training sessions and communication as well as inspired our Homies to be more responsible every day. Our next step is to encourage our guests to increasingly use public transport, recycle correctly as well as use electricity and water wiser. We have managed to develop sustainability into a vital part of our everyday work, which we are proud of. Developing it further as well as doing the deeds we have promised to do to decrease emissions will also play a crucial role in the future. Our goal is to get the EcoCompass certificate as well as the STF- logo to prove our responsibility work. We aim to have an independent third-party audit in our premises soon and when they show us green light, our sustainability work will continue in a more visible way, under well-known recognitions. After that we will continue to improve our sustainability work to renew the certificates and keep them in use. So, in other words, the sustainability work continues. 😉
You can read more about STF here.
You can read more about EcoCompass here.
We hope that you are as excited about our sustainability journey as we are! We will update our web pages as the work proceed. Cheers!