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Sustainability - “Reduce, Reuse and Recycle”

Carbon-Friendly Certified Business

Sustainability “Reduce, Reuse and Recycle”

Carbon-Friendly Certified Business

Our family goal is (and always has been), to reduce-reuse-recycle and that any resulting waste be kept to an absolute minimum, therefore, when we bought Wine Tours by Bike it was natural that this was to become an integral part in the running of our new business too.
We are extremely proud to own a Carbon-Friendly Certified Business and as our carbon footprint is small, the little we have left, we have offset by supporting the regeneration of native forests with EKOS, with our plan to work towards being Carbon Zero.

Our three-acre rural plot is home to approx. 60 olive trees and 50 plus ornamental trees and natives, and this year we planted a further 45 large trees on site.  Our trees play two roles, as not only do they enhance the surroundings for everyone to enjoy but more importantly, they do an amazing job of soaking up CO2.

 

We offer a timetabled shuttle pickup service to not only make our trips as efficient as possible and reduce our carbon emissions but to also cut back on the carbon emissions that would otherwise come from our visitors’ cars if they were all to drive out to our place.

Our power comes via solar panels on the bike shed roof and supplies us with all the power we need to operate the business and our home, and any excess is sold back to the grid.

 

We no longer offer single-use plastic water bottles and instead have free water via a cooler with compostable paper cups and we encourage our lovely bikers to bring their own reusable bottles to fill up here and at the cellar doors.

 

Our Kona Africa Bikes were designed and produced to be as their name suggests, a missionary and aid worker bike in Africa. Kona had a program where for every two bikes they sold an additional one would be sent to Africa to the aid missions – the 36 we bought were the last available in NZ, but this meant we directly supported the sending of 18 bikes to Africa as part of this program.

Our cellar door maps are printed on recycled paper. We use pencils instead of pens to reduce the plastic waste, we recycle wine boxes so our bikers can use them to carry their wine home safe.

 

Photo credit Trevor Hammond
Tiaki means to care for people and place.
The Tiaki promise is a commitment to care for New Zealand, for now and for future generations.

tiaki promise

 

We use eco-friendly handwash products in reusable bottles from Jeymar Soap in Wairau Valley Township (another eco-friendly family local business) jeymarsoap.nz. Spray bottles are replenished using concentrate cleaning products.

 

Added Extras
Our miniature horses (Fudge, Madam and Guy) are a great source of manure for our garden and they also take care of fruit and vegetable scraps.
Any pruning done is mulched and composted on site and all house-hold organic matter goes into the worm farm. (our worms do not have names!!).
Our milk comes in glass bottles.
We use Jute and cotton bags for shopping.  We opt for produce and products in glass, tin and paper bags, over plastic whenever we can.
Anything possible is recycled including cardboard, plastics, glass, aluminium and tin cans to the Resource Recovery Centre in Blenheim
or we reuse it at home i.e. jars, bottles, boxes.
In fact, we are almost at the stage now where very little rubbish is sent to the landfill.