The Hotel Samba in Lloret de Mar, a pioneer in the use of reclaimed water, was the venue for the closing ceremony and presentation of the extrapolation of the results of the European Greentour project.
This project has developed an environmental assessment tool for accommodation establishments, restaurants and leisure activities to obtain an ecolabel. This ecolabel has a linked QR code that gives access to a summary of the establishment’s environmental impact in 9 categories (AP: Acidification terrestrial and freshwater; CC: Climate change; FEP: Eutrophication freshwater; MEP: Eutrophication marine; ODP: Ozone depletion;POF: Photochemical ozone formation – human health;FRD: Resource use, energy carriers;RI: Respiratory inorganic and WDP: Water scarcity). In the case of Lloret de Mar, 19 establishments took part, 63% of which were accommodation establishments, 21% catering establishments and 16% activities.
Elizabeth Keegan, manager of Lloret Turisme, explains that “the Greentour project has calculated for the first time the overall environmental impact of a tourist destination by extrapolating the data entered by the establishments in the participating municipalities and territories, to which the impact of tourists’ travel to the destination and the treatment of waste generated during their stay has been added”. Rias Baixas, Guimaraes (Portugal), Camino Lebaniego, Massif du Sancy (France) and Lloret de Mar have participated in this project.
The results for these destinations show that the total environmental impact per tourist, in terms of carbon footprint, varies between 132 kg CO2 eq. for Massif du Sancy, in France, and 323 kg CO2 eq. for Guimarães, in Portugal. In the case of Lloret de Mar, this value stands at 221 kg CO2 eq.
Transport is the category with the largest carbon footprint, representing between 60% and 96% of the total impact, depending on the particular case of each destination. Territories where tourists arrive mostly by air have a much higher overall environmental impact.
After transport, the activity with the greatest impact in all destinations is catering (food and drink), which varies between 26% of the total impact in the case of Lloret de Mar and 14% in the case of Massif du Sancy. The third source in terms of carbon footprint is accommodation, whose contribution is between 14% of the overall impact in the case of Lloret de Mar and 1% in the case of Guimarães. The leisure sector contributes less than 7% of the total impact of each destination analysed, while the management of waste generated by tourists’ accounts for less than 2%.
If only the impact of accommodation, food and leisure activities of tourists is taken into account, without considering transport, the GREENTOUR project has obtained an average value of 25.2 kg of CO2 eq. per tourist. In the particular case of Lloret de Mar, this value is below the average of 23 kg of CO2 eq. per tourist.
In the words of the Councillor for Tourism, Jordi Sais: “For Lloret Turisme, taking part in this project has allowed us to participate in a European project for the first time and to incorporate a strategic tool that provides us with environmental impact data that we did not have until now and that represents an important step towards a more sustainable and responsible tourism model. In addition, it also provides valuable information to tourist establishments and different sections of the City Council to focus their strategy for reducing environmental impact in an efficient manner. It is, therefore, a success as a public-private collaboration project that benefits the whole destination”.
Although the project has ended, its legacy continues and the consortium partners are working on the dissemination of the tools and results obtained for implementation in the tourism sector. Greentour demonstrates that, through collaboration between different entities and countries, it is possible to develop ambitious and effective projects to address the environmental challenges of the tourism sector and promote its transformation by incorporating more sustainable practices.
The Greentour project is a European project funded by the Interreg Sudoe programme with a duration of 28 months (from 1 November 2020 to 28 February 2023) and a budget of 1,171,998.68 €. The consortium is made up of 9 partners and 20 associated partners in Spain, France, Portugal and Andorra.
