For 20 years Kanu Kapers has been a leading voice for truly sustainable tourism in Noosa.
The natural environment is at the core of its business, as is evident through its tours, operations and marketing. Its vision is to preserve the Noosa Everglades and promote and educate sustainable tourism to consumers, industry and community.
Says Kanu Kapers’ marketing director Hayley Gee: “We have promoted ecotourism to over 20,000 international guests. We have also given talks on sustainable tourism at industry events, in schools and we’ve formed partnerships. We are Biosphere partners, and work with similar minded organisations to raise awareness and funds for projects aimed at protecting the environment.”
In 2019 Kanu Kapers launched a carbon offset scheme for their guests, raising funds to purchase trees for koala habitat which are planted by local charity, Koala Crusaders. To date they have raised over $5000 and, since recently revising the scheme, donations are soaring. This is a valuable local partnership between a sustainable tour operator and a wildlife charity that also offers education to thousands of tourists to the Noosa region and reduces emissions through offsets.
In addition to environmental conservation, Kanu Kapers aim to negate the impact of carbon emissions caused by its operations.
In 2017 the organisation undertook a full environmental evaluation of its business. This concluded that its tours have very little impact and are carbon neutral as there is no use of motorised watercraft.
However, an impact from the carbon emissions produced by its guests and staff travelling to the launch site was identified. This triggered researching how and where customers and staff were travelling to site and an analysis to define an emissions offset strategy.
Fast forward to now and Kanu Kapers have an eco-tree online carbon calculator for customer and staff use which calculates carbon usage on a kilometre basis. Based on the calculated outcome, the organisation requests a monetary donation to cover the estimated cost of the emissions. It generally equates to approximately $10 per car for a return journey from Noosa, which is what it costs Koala Crusaders to plant and maintain one tree.
The Kanu Kapers team pride themselves on meeting five of the global sustainable development goals; sustainable communities, responsible consumption, climate action, life on land and partnerships.
Says Hayley: “The simple model of carbon offset calculation and local partnerships is something that can be easily replicated anywhere in the world. We find that customers want to give back after gaining so much from their experience in Noosa’s pristine nature. It makes both good business and good environmental sense to us.”
For further inspiration to support Noosa’s zero emissions goals, head to ZEN’s website zeroemissionsnoosa.com.au Join ZEN to donate to its work or help out with projects.
