A new campaign is designed to encourage holidaymakers not to leave their climate awareness at home when they travel. With this, Copenhagen wants to address a dilemma – and inspire other cities.
A free drink as a reward for a bike ride, collecting rubbish with a green kayak or an extra round of skiing on the waste incineration plant: With a new campaign and a range of offers, the Danish capital Copenhagen wants to encourage tourists to act in a climate-friendly way this summer.
As part of the “CopenPay” initiative, Copenhagen holidaymakers can earn rewards in bars, museums and other attractions in the city, for example by using a bicycle or the metro or by picking up rubbish in and around city parks, beaches or bodies of water. Anyone who brings their plastic waste to the Danish National Gallery SMK can turn it into a work of art in a workshop. The promotions also apply to locals.
Capital of cycling – and also of “sustainable tourism”?
According to the tourism organization Wonderful Copenhagen, the campaign is not aimed at attracting more tourists to the city. Rather, it is intended to make it easier for travelers to put their climate awareness into action: A large proportion of tourists want to act sustainably, but only a few actually change their behavior, the organization said.
Copenhagen now wants to bridge this gap by allowing holidaymakers to do concrete things that benefit the climate and the environment. “We want visitors to make conscious, environmentally friendly choices and hopefully have an even better experience during their visit,” explained the director of Wonderful Copenhagen, Mikkel Aarø-Hansen. Tourism must be transformed from a burden on the environment to a force for positive change. An important step in this is to change the way people get around at their destination, what they consume and how they interact with the locals.
Copenhagen has long strived to be perceived as the “capital of sustainable tourism”. The initiative is a pilot project that will initially run until August 11th – and ultimately aims to inspire other cities around the world to take similar initiatives.
Source: Stern
