Eco Tours Australia

Organising cleanup days at local beaches they had the idea of taking the concept ‘on the road’ to clean up the beaches along the GOR.  Within four weeks of the girls bringing the idea to Paul, the first TBOT departed with Autopia providing the transport, driver, and meals free of charge for the 24 participants.

Collaborating with GORCC and Green Spectrum who came along to do educational talks during the tour, the 43 passengers on board the two tours that departed in May and June 2018, worked together to collect 50.6kg of rubbish from the beaches along the GOR. The information was put on Tangaroa Blue Foundation database which is an Australian registered charity focused on the health of our marine environment.

Media Support:

• Stay up-to-date with TBOT Facebook
• Climactic Podcast – TBOT Profile (May18)
• VTIC Victoria Tourism Industry Council – News (Jan18)
• ABC Open – Explore Stories from Australia (Jul18
• The Sustainable Hour 94.7FM The Pulse Radio – Centre for Climate Safety (Aug18)

Past Events:

• 25 Aug 2018 – Koala Conservation + Beach Clean Day
• 30 Jun 2018 – Trash Bags on Tour – GOR Beach Clean Up
• 27 May 2018 –

Our Phillip Island day tours now include entry into Phillip Island Nature Parks’ Antarctic Journey, an interactive and informative display about the Antarctic region.  This is a project managed by Phillip Island Nature Parks in partnership with the WWF, with the aim to increase awareness of environmental issues around the Southern Ocean.   Locally, the WWF are focused on protecting creatures of the Southern Ocean through sanctuary zones and have so far established 2 of the world’s largest marine sanctuary zones in the Antarctic region.  Seals, whales, penguins, sea birds and fish are all benefiting from WWFprograms.

 

We are proud to be supporting such a vital cause and hope that our guests depart with a deeper understanding of the issues this part of the world is facing.  Part of their ticket sales also goes to the WWF.

Autopia Tours love wildlife and sadly, some of the koala population is struggling through disease, habitat destruction and declining population numbers.  

Therefore, we felt it was our duty to help protect some of the wildlife that makes our tours so special!  Our mountain biking tours visit one of Victoria’s key koala habitats, the You Yangs Regional Park.  We are therefore proud sponsors of the Koala Clancy Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation passionate about the health and well-being of wild koalas in this region.  They aim to raise awareness of the issues koalas are facing in Victoria and to get visitors involved through education, research and how to responsibly view and interact with koalas.

A portion of every ticket for our mountain biking tours goes straight towards the Koala Clancy Foundation, so as a guest of this tour you can be assured you are contributing the sustainability of koala populations in the region.

Autopia Tours have also assisted in tree planting days in the You Yangs through our university programs.

We also recognized the importance of working within our local area.  Thus, when we contacted our local council, Hobson Bay City Council, we spoke with them about programs in our local area that we could become involved with.  Now working closely with their conservation department, Autopia Tours have helped our local community through their tree planting and re-vegetation program.

We have so far helped replant some of the Paisley Drain Reserve area, with over 2000 new plants becoming established which will help protect the soil and provide habitat for wildlife.  This site was once considered highly degraded, however through planting programs such as this, it has now become a valuable wetland and mangrove conservation area and is home to many bird species.

While coal provided people the opportunity to revolutionise industry in the past, we understand it is no longer the way for the future due to its finite and environmentally degrading nature. Therefore, we are proud to be moving our depot over to a solar system. After consultation with earlier this year, we have decided to invest in the installation of a solar system at our depot that is large enough to supply us with renewable energy for all of our power needs. This is in conjunction with our initial consultation over minimising our overall energy use. By 2018 Autopia Tours will proudly be 100% supported by renewable energy captured on site. Not only will this reduce our negative environmental impacts, it has also been forecast this will be a highly cost-effective solution over the long term.

Many of our employees live in and around the city area, so we decided to build a communal staff vegetable garden on site so all staff are able to enjoy the benefits of fresh herbs and vegetables! 

We also wanted to do this as sustainably as possible, therefore we decided to only use recycled materials and organic soil. Discarded tyres have made great planting boxes for many of the vegetables and these have the added benefit of remaining warm which helps the plants to grow. We then sourced recycled materials through Planet Ark, who produce planting boxes from 100% discarded ink cartridges.After establishing the garden, we decided it was best to update our waste management policies also, by incorporating a compost system as well. 

All staff are now encouraged to dispose of all their organic waste, such as food scraps, into the compost system so that valuable nutrients are recycled back into the ground and feed our new garden as well.

Wildlife is so important to us here at Autopia Tours, we have chosen to Wipe for Wildlife at the workplace, using only recycled toilet paper and tissues!  We’ve chosen Who Gives A Crap, who not only protect our precious forests, but also give back to the world by helping struggling communities to develop much needed basic facilities for hygiene and sanitation.

Thousands and thousands of invaluable trees are cut down annually just to make toilet paper.  The trees we are losing provide homes and food for wildlife, absorb carbon from the atmosphere and prevent soil erosion.  Who Gives A Crap produce their toilet paper from recycled textbooks and office paper; materials that have already been removed from the environment.  By choosing recycled toilet paper, we reduce the need for deforestation of bushland and habitat.  If you would like to go only recycled also, visit Zoos Victoria or Who Gives A Crap to sign up!.

Being a travel and transport-oriented company, we believe this is a huge step forward in reducing our ecological footprint and are very excited to have joined this program. 

Emissions from vehicles and flights contribute to the greenhouse effect and hence lead to climate change and global warming.  Offsetting with Greenfleetsupports native reforestation programs such as tree planting along the Great Ocean Road.  Forests absorb carbon emissions from the atmosphere, so programs like Greenfleet helps to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases remaining in the atmosphere, neutralising our vehicles contributions towards climate change.

Autopia Tours is excited to announce we have offset 100% of all our transport emissions for 2016-2017, equivalent to the removal of 209.32 tonnes of CO₂-e from the atmosphere.  

By choosing to tour with Autopia, our customers are contributing to the restoration of native Australian forests through Greenfleet initiatives and are having a minimal impact on climate change.

Click here to view our Greenfleet Offset Carbon Emissions Certificate for 2016-17.

We take our commitment to the environment seriously!

Printed brochures are a great way for us to communicate with our guests, however they are also resource intensive to produce and distribute.  They consume large amounts of paper and ink and may only be used the one time before they are thrown out!  We decided there had to be a better way while still being able to maintain communication with potential guests.

We discovered Mystique, a printing company that share our strong environmental values!  By switching our printing needs to Mystique, Autopia Tours’ brochures are now made with all recycled paper and natural inks and by a company that completely offsets all of their carbon emissions also!  Mystique are also local for our business, reducing the intensive energy consumption required for long transportations.

We would like all this effort to continue on down the line too, so we also ask our guests to please be mindful when disposing of brochures they have finished with.  We suggest handing them back to where you picked them up from or passing them on to other travellers who may find them useful also.

Protecting our remaining forests is only part of the solution towards climate change issues; another is to rebuild those forests that have been destroyed.  We decided it was time to start giving back to the regions that have supported us by joining Planet Ark in their tree planting days.  Their program aims to replant Australia with native vegetation which are drought resistant, protect waterways from sediment fall and erosion and also encourages native wildlife to return to areas they had abandoned.  

Our staff have had fun getting outdoors as a team, getting their hands dirty and knowing they’ve made a difference for the better.  If you’re living in Australia and are keen to get involved also, you can register your interest to take part in one of their tree planting days through their website.

 We therefore needed to look at each area of the business and realise ways to minimise the amount of waste we produced.  Moving to digital feedback forms, introducing a large onsite recyclable skip, introduction of an onsite organic waste compost system, daily food ordering, ordering non-perishable goods in bulk, carrying drinking water on board our buses for our guests and introducing a policy of not printing unless necessary and avoiding any single use or disposable items has drastically reduced the amount of waste we produce daily.  Instead, Autopia Tours have created a culture where waste is minimised through either reduction, reuse or recycling wherever possible.

We want to be there for our guests when they need to contact us and that means our office remains open for the majority of the day.  This requires a lot of energy use through lighting for the offices.  We recognized there had to be a more efficient way of doing things, so we contacted the Hobson’s Bay City Council, who recommended we switch all of our lighting over to energy efficient LED lights.

The process caused minimal disruption to our operations and we have seen our energy consumption drop by around 65% as a result.  We are now even looking at replacing traditional on/off light switches in areas such as the kitchen, bathrooms and walkways with either timers or sensors to ensure they are off when not in use, further reducing our energy use.

If you are looking to reduce your energy consumption or Light$mart Program, try contacting your local council to find out more about what options are available for your region.