What is Green Start?

Green Start provides the simple first steps that a business can make to become more sustainable and can be easily adapted for most accommodation and attraction businesses. The aim of Green Start is to help proprietors and managers learn how to make their businesses more sustainable and prepare them for formal accreditation with validated scheme providers, such as the Green Tourism Business Scheme.  With a ‘pick and mix’ menu of criteria Green Start allows businesses to choose actions that are appropriate to their business. 

Initially Green Start was launched as a pilot in March 2008 and closed in August 2008.  Following this VisitBritain is now gathering feedback from the participants of the programme before making the programme more widely available again later in the year.  Please register your interest by downloading this form and return it to sustainable.tourism@visitbritain.org

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Why should I join Green Start?

Green Start is an entry level programme designed to help you make your business more sustainable, whether you are an accommodation provider or an attraction.  There are numerous benefits to becoming a more sustainable business, not least of which is improving your business efficiency and possibly making more money.  Find out more about the full range of benefits of taking those first steps with Green Start.

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What are the requirements?

Sustainability is a complex topic and it's far more than just being environmentally friendly. Green Start is designed to help you understand the range and scope of sustainability, whilst improving your business performance and customer satisfaction. Find out the criteria for Green Start along with full details of why each aspect of the criteria are important to your business.

Please note that if you are already in a green scheme, such as the Green Tourism Business Scheme you will not be eligible for Green Start.  Green Start is only for businesses who want to learn about sustainability initially or for those who are not sure what their next steps will be.

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Is it right for me?

You may be confused with which way to go – is full accreditation a better option than Green Start for your business? 

Do you think you are doing something for sustainability but are not certain its enough to call yourself a green business? Or maybe you don’t think you know anything about the topic (you might surprise yourself how much of it is simple common business sense).

This section will help you carry out a simple audit that will steer you in the right direction.

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News on the pilot

Green Start is new for the industry and is a significant attempt to move the critical issue of sustainable tourism from being relatively niche and misunderstood into the mainstream of the tourism industry in England.  The innovative software that participants will be using has never been used before in this industry, although it has been tried and tested in many others.  As such VisitBritain offered a number of businesses that want to learn more about sustainability the opportunity to join a pilot free of charge.

VisitBritain wanted to hear from the industry how well Green Start worked and more importantly how easy it was to use this new piece of technology.  The pilot is now in its evaluation phase and as such entry into the pilot is closed. The feedback will inform any changes that will be made prior the programme becoming available later in the year. 

Please fill out the attached form and email it back to sustainable.tourism@visitbritian.org to express your interest in getting involved in Green Start.

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