This statement, sets out Visit West’s environmental sustainability strategy and how we seek to deliver against it.
We recognise our responsibility to help protect the planet. We are committed to minimising the impact our company has on the environment and supporting those who are working to improve global environmental sustainability.
Core elements of our strategy
Our environmental sustainability strategy seeks to address greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions and waste as we strive to continually strengthen our environmental practices. We will comply with all applicable environmental laws and regulations.
Website Sustainability
We have undertaken an independent website sustainability review for our website and are working towards reducing the carbon weight of each of our sites, therefore making them more sustainable.
Typefaces/Fonts – We aim to use standard or system fonts where possible whilst accounting for accessibility. We ask our web designers to account for this is new website designs. We re-use aspects of both functionality styling and graphical icons as well as considering the font usage across the design with consistent font weights and sizes across the sections and functionality.
Images – On newer designs there has been consideration to the amount of image based functionality used, where we can use icons and graphics in their place. We are aiming to compress images and are investigating the option of using webp images and other modern image types where possible.
Video – We aim to use video sparingly across our websites and where used we link to an external site such as YouTube.
Lazy Loading – We use lazy loading across our sites this means that images are only loaded when the page is scrolled to the section containing them. We also are looking to reduce scrolling imagery on our newer website designs. We are aim to limit full width functionality used on our newer designed websites.
JavaScript – We are working with our web developers to look at reducing and merging multiple versions of javascripts on our sites
Hosting - The hosting providers that we use for our sites use renewable energy accounts for a substantial proportion of the carbon weight. The Green Web Check Foundation has confirmed this.
Caching – We are working with our web developers to use caching wherever possible, so that when re-visiting a page that only those assets that have changed are re-loaded, saving network traffic, server load and processing on the consumer device. The sites are set up to partially use back/forward cache.
Information for visitors
We are striving to work with local businesses, partners and stakeholders to provide as much information as possible to our visitors and website users so that they can make more sustainable choices. This includes working with members to highlight sustainable businesses and practices, including adding specific sustainability information to website business listings under the facilities tab. We also are aiming to produce more content about sustainable practices in the region and bringing this together on the Sustainability section here.
On our industry website VisitWest.co.uk we have highlighted sustainability resources for local business here.
We are continuing to add more resource for all our stakeholders.
Reducing waste
We promote reuse and recycling, as well as the use of supplies that are recycled and recyclable and whose production and use minimise the consumption of natural resources. Specifically, we aim to reduce our consumption of single-use plastics, use environmentally friendly paper, and recycle where possible, including plastics and large electronic equipment.
Sustainable Travel
We encourage our staff, suppliers and visitors and wider stakeholders to use sustainable transport where possible, particularly active options such as walking and cycling, as well as public transport. We promote more sustainable transport options more heavily than carbon heavy transport in our communications. We aim to work with sustainable and public transport providers in the region on a strategic level.
A Sustainable Business Network / Support
We are committed to working with our suppliers, clients, and other stakeholders to reduce their environmental footprint.
We are in the process of developing a new process as to how this will be achieved and this statement will be updated in due course.
We have developed a sustainability hub for businesses working in the Visitor Economy - https://www.visitwest.co.uk/sustainability
Projects
Redcliffe and Temple Business Improvement District help businesses to operate more sustainably by working closely with the successful and pioneering schemes already in operation in Bristol. The BID deliver initiatives to encourage a responsible business community.
Learn more about their projects - https://www.redcliffeandtemplebid.co.uk/project_type/sustainability
