GREENING OF A CITY
PATA President Emeritus Lakshman Ratnapala describes a destination
rising from a tourism slump – with ‘Going Green’ as a key theme
of its tourism-marketing plan.

he ‘green movement’ sweeping the world and giving impetus to such ideas as ecotourism is transforming a relatively small city from grass roots to rooftops and, in the process, proving that ‘going green’ is a magnet that attracts tourists and tourism dollars. In essence, it is a statement that ‘green’ is good for business.

By American standards, San Francisco is a small city – smaller than Colombo – with a population of only around 760,000 residents, heavily dependent on tourism for its welfare. While the big talkers are focusing on issues such as global warming, San Francisco – instead of merely talking the talk – is actually walking the walk. It has taken the environmental bull by the horns, tackling practical issues with a ‘can-do attitude’ and has become a poster child for the global green-city movement. In step with an array of winning initiatives by political and business leaders, the San Francisco Convention & Visitors Bureau (SFCVB) has made ‘Going Green’ one of the key themes of its business plan for tourism marketing – perhaps, the only tourist board in the world to move from merely talking up a publicity storm in the media about plans to actually pushing plans to action.

For starters, San Francisco has banned plastic shopping bags in grocery stores and restaurants from using polystyrene or Styrofoam ware. Mayor Gavin Newsom has prohibited city-government employees from using plastic water bottles. The prohibition extends to city contractors and city-sponsored events. All this is helping to reduce the piles of garbage and increase the city’s garbage-recycling rate from the current 67 per cent to 75 per cent by 2010, reaching zero waste by 2020 – only some 12 plus years away. San Francisco’s urban-compost programme is the largest of its kind in the US. About 90 per cent of compost made is sold to vineyards in the area.

Transport services are also going green in a big way. All city-owned or operated vehicles from buses to cars are being committed to reducing greenhouse emissions. All taxis operating in the city will be forced to convert to hybrid or alternative-fuel vehicles within five years. The city-owned fleet of 400 garbage trucks will convert to bio-diesel by the end of 2007. San Francisco’s Municipal Transportation Agency is already the third-largest hybrid bus fleet in the US and the entire fleet is to become 100 per cent emission free by 2020. In addition, the city has planted 16,000 trees since 2004, in accordance with a mayoral pledge to plant 25,000 trees at an average of 5,000 a year.

San Francisco has the largest city-owned solar installation in the country – a 60,000-square-foot solar array atop the city’s principal convention facility. The solar-electricity production on the roof, combined with energy savings from energy-efficient lighting under the roof, is expected to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by 34,000 tons over the project’s lifetime – this being the equivalent of removing 7,000 cars from the road for one year.

In a world where the environment has become a rallying cry for big business – especially the business of tourism – and in a global landscape where international tourists are looking for ‘green destinations’, San Francisco has successfully turned its ‘green consciousness’ to rake in more and more tourism dollars. The city is now renowned as a place on the cutting edge of the environmental movement. Capitalising on this reputation, the SFCVB recently presented its latest business plan incorporating the green-destination concept as one of its key themes.

More than 60 businesses in all market segments (hotels, restaurants, services, retail, etc.) have joined the city’s ‘Green Business Program’ which encourages businesses to take proactive measures that are not only good for their bottom lines, but also for the environment.

While San Francisco is currently experiencing an upswing in the visitor industry, it wasn’t long ago that the ‘perfect storm’ of the early 2000s – the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the regional technology bust, a national economic downturn, the war in Iraq and SARS (which affected the city heavily because of the influence of Asian inbound tourists) – converged to wreak havoc on a booming visitor market.