Kaikoura - a Green Globe community
In August 2002, Kaikoura became the first community in New Zealand to become Green Globe benchmarked and in 2004 the first community to become Green Globe Certified. Kaikoura is the only community in the world to annually achieve certification since 2004.
Being benchmarked means we know what effect each person in Kaikoura, including tourists is having on our environment. As the saying goes, you can't manage unless you measure and benchmarking measures our environmental impact so we can protect our environment.
So what is our environmental impact?
Between July 2008 and June 2009, each person* in Kaikoura has the following impacts:
- Used enough energy to power 10 1/2 one hundred watt light bulbs for one year!
- To offset the CO2 emissions produced by this energy needs each person to plant 700 trees, (that's 5 tonnes of CO2 each person is producing)
- Our vehicles produce;
22,000 nine kg gas bottles of Nitrogen Oxides (204,800 kg's),
1578 nine kg gas bottles of Sulphur Dioxides, (15,406 kg's) and 166,950 nine kg gas bottles of PM 10 Particulates (1,052,312 kg's),
(a nine kg gas bottle is what you use for your barbeque) - The drinking water we each use is enough to fill 27 average size swimming pools but even taking our rural irrigations we still use enough to fill 5 average swimming pools each! (1,426,570 litres).
- Each person took 19 black rubbish bags of waste to landfill. That's the equivalent of 176 kgs of solid waste each, which the average New Zealander disposes of 900kg
- 94% of the herbicides and pesticide chemical's Council used were biodegradable.
- 60% of the land in Kaikoura is native vegetation protected for conservation.
- 83% of water tests on our rivers, streams and beaches passed water quality tests.
- 3.2%% of all tourism businesses in Kaikoura are environmentally accredited
- Kaikoura District Council also has an Environmental and Social Sustainability policy.
*the numbers of people were calculated as an average of 5027 people each day (including an average of 997 tourists per night).
We also measure a local environmental issue and the social health and well being of the community:
- 0% of truck accidents on State Highway 1 involved chemical spills.
- 40% of residents surveyed take part in voluntary initiatives.
If you have a question regarding this benchmark data please contact the council's Environmental Development officer.
