The article focusses pretty heavily on local production of “sustainable aviation fuel”, but the draft Tourism Environment Action Plan looks at lots of ways to make NZ tourism more sustainable. They are currently seeking public input. From MBIE:
The draft action plan aims to ensure tourism has a positive impact on the natural environment and proposes 6 focus areas to achieve this. These areas or Tirohanga Hou (new pathways) are:
- Tourism journeys are decarbonised
- Tourism champions biodiversity
- Visitor management is optimised for te taiao (nature)
- Accelerated technology uptake and innovation enable regeneration
- Tourism businesses are incentivised and enabled for sustainability and regeneration
- The tourism system and its levers are optimised and resourced to support regeneration
Each area has multiple actions that will deliver positives not only for the environment but for communities and tourism operations.
Some actions see the tourism industry working with communities to create a picture of what healthy visitation looks like. Others focus on supporting and incentivising tourism operators to adopt sustainable or regenerative practices. Rapid investment in low-carbon technologies for long-haul travel is another key action.
The full draft plan is here, along with details about how to make submissions - including an online survey.
Edit: Just did the survey. It takes about 10 mins.
In addition, do we do methane capture at any landfills?
Yeah, a lot of the major landfills are already generating power with it, and more seem to be upgrading all the time. Landfills are required to flare or use the methane anyway, but older sites aren’t always good at collecting all of it before it seeps out.
But yeah, any methane going to electricity generation will have to be replaced with something else if they’re turning waste into jet fuel.
You commented on comparing to leaving it in the landfill, which creates methane. But if it mostly doesn’t get into the atmosphere it’s probably an argument for leaving it in the landfill.
I just went on a dive into the internet researching how methane capture works. I don’t know why, but I kind of imagined it as a big tarpaulin over the whole thing or something. It turns out it’s just a bunch of pipes into the ground that lets the methane seep into them. So I can imagine a lot still isn’t captured.