City Sightseeing Cape Town, the company that operates the well-known red double decker open-top buses has become the first bus company in South Africa to be certified carbon neutral.

City Sightseeing operate a fleet of continually upgraded, low emission buses that comply with all Euro standards for environmental impact. The fleet has consistently complied with Euro standards since 2006.

City Sightseeing has also made great inroads into greening the rest of the business and has adopted all the latest available methodology and technology to reduce noise pollution as well as energy and water consumption. The company also recycles all of their waste, which has in turn led to the creation of sustainable employment.

However, City Sightseeing realized that as a bus company they would still have a footprint and so commissioned Global Carbon Exchange (GCX), a leading strategic sustainability consultancy to conduct an independent carbon audit in order to calculate their carbon footprint under the guidelines set out in the GHG Protocol.

Supporting a local project

"The results of our first audit, conducted a year ago, showed that we needed to offset our remaining emissions, scopes 1 and 2," explains Claus Tworeck, CEO of City Sightseeing Cape Town. "However, we did not want to simply purchase carbon credits at random, but rather to support a local, Cape Town based project."

City Sightseeing subsequently spent the past year researching various projects and finally selected Reliance - a commercial producer of high quality composted products. Reliance has adopted a composting methodology that reduces the amount of methane released into the atmosphere when compared to other composting methods - thereby affording the company carbon credits to sell.

"There is a symbiotic vision shared by City Sightseeing and Reliance," says Tworeck. "Both organisations believe that it is not only imperative that we prevent more damage being done to the environment but that we also have to focus on reversing the damage. We believe that this can be done by adapting innovative, sustainable solutions to tackle current social and environmental challenges."

"We urgently have to reconsider and rethink the way we are conducting business in order to stop, or ideally even reverse, environmental damage and degradation," says Tworeck. "City Sightseeing is passionate about Cape Town and preserving this environment for our future generations. We will continue to strive towards greater sustainability and responsible tourism."