Certification Schemes

Certification schemes provide a third party guarantee of quality, safety and reliability of products to your customers.

Similarly, the National Tourism Accreditation Program is designed to raise the professionalism of the industry through the implementation of business management practices and standards.

Different schemes cover different aspects of energy use, water use and waste disposal and are often more relevant to one type of business than another, so it is best to explore the options and choose the scheme that is right for your business.

The following are the most widely-recognised sustainability certification schemes operating in Australia.

Green Globe Program

Green Globe delivers travel and tourism benchmarking and certification products and services to facilitate sustainable travel and tourism for companies, communities, and ecotourism operations.

The Green Globe Program consists of two steps, Benchmarking (Bronze) and Certification (Silver).

An organisation can commence their Green Globe program at either level.

Benchmarking

The benchmarking stage begins when an organisation commits to the Green Globe Program. It involves completing the following two steps:

• Policy - establishing a sustainability policy
• Benchmarking - completing a Benchmarking Assessment.

The program then assesses organisations against criteria in order to achieve 'Benchmarked' (Bronze) status.

Certification

To achieve certification, businesses completing the last four steps of the program using the online Self Assessment Checklist tool. The four steps are:

• Compliance - comply with relevant legislation and policy requirements
• Approach - implement an environmental and socially sustainable approach
• Performance - document performance outcomes
• Communication - communicate and consult with interested parties.

Once completed, organisations are again assessed against criteria to achieve ‘Certified’ (Silver) status as a Green Globe organisation.

Organisations that have achieved Green Globe Certification for a period of five or more continuous years are rewarded with the use of the Green Globe Certified (Gold) logo.

Full details of the program, including cost, can be found at Green Globe Program

Green Globe Lite

The Green Globe Lite programme provides your business with an online user friendly Health Check Framework. It assesses all key environmental impact areas within your business to help get you started on measuring your performance. Green Globe Lite is an international program developed globally and endorsed by the Australian Hotels Association.

Full details of the program, including cost, can be found at Green Globe Lite

Ecotourism and Nature Tourism Certification

The Eco Certification Program, provided by Ecotourism Australia, was developed by industry for industry, and addresses the need to identify genuine ecotourism and nature tourism operators in Australia.

Ecotourism and nature tourism certification provide industry, protected area managers, local communities and travellers with an assurance that a certified product is backed by a commitment to best practice ecological sustainability, natural area management and the provision of quality ecotourism experiences.

The Eco Certification Program accredits products not companies. Three types of nature tourism or ecotourism product may be accredited: Tours, Attractions and Accommodation.

Eco Tourism Australia will soon be launching a new Climate Action Leaders Certification Scheme.

For more information see Eco Certification Program

Greenhouse Challenge Plus

The Australian Government's Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts manages the Greenhouse Challenge Plus program.

The program enables Australian companies to form working partnerships with the Australian Government to improve energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The program builds on the success of Greenhouse Challenge (established in 1995), integrating the Generator Efficiency Standards and the Greenhouse Friendly initiative into a single industry program.

The program is designed for small to medium enterprises but is not tourism specific.

Greenhouse Challenge Plus is designed to:

• reduce greenhouse gas emissions
• accelerate the uptake of energy efficiency
• integrate greenhouse issues into business decision-making
• provide more consistent reporting of greenhouse gas emissions levels.

Note that the model for this program may change from July 2009.

See Greenhouse Challenge Plus

Greenhouse Challenge Plus Energy Audit Tool

The Greenhouse Challenge Plus Energy Audit Tool aims to assist non-technical or semi-technical energy managers in small to medium organisations to:

• Identify actions to improve energy efficiency through the use of a simple but detailed audit checklist
• Develop plans for implementing energy efficiency actions.

The checklist contains notes supplying the auditor with further explanation or hints on how to complete the tasks. It should be possible to complete the majority of tasks through simple observation.

Use of the Greenhouse Challenge Plus Energy Audit Tool is free and supported with training on how to use the software tools to measure emissions.

Download the Energy Audit Tool