Rethinking Dining, From Kitchen to Compost | GreenBiz.com

With more than 20 locations across the U.S., Xanterra Parks and Resorts serves people visiting Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, Napa Valley and a number of national and state parks.

In line with its connection to nature, Xanterra has been taking steps to lower its environmental impacts with energy efficiency measures, waste reduction and choosing local and sustainable foods.

Greener World Media contributor Sarah Fister Gale spoke with Chris Lane from Xanterra about how to green up dining facilities, the importance of environmental management systems, how to bring down your energy needs and what it takes to get your suppliers to cut their waste.

Rethinking Dining, From Kitchen to Compost | GreenBiz.com

Fiji’s Tourism industry has been largely unaffected by the recent flooding

20th of January 2009

PRESS RELEASE

Tourism Fiji in collaboration with key industry partners including the Fiji Islands Hotel and Tourism Association (FIHTA), Society of Fiji Travel Associates (SOFTA) and Air Pacific confirmed that the necessary infrastructure, facilities and equipment to operate Fiji’s Tourism industry has been largely unaffected by the recent flooding with only minor damage reported by member Hotels, Resorts, Transport, Transfer and Cruise Operators, and International and Domestic airlines.

The industry is unified in its efforts and working hard to reassure visitor’s considering travel to Fiji to take advantage of Fiji’s tropical climate, excellent deals and of course to enjoy Fiji’s biggest asset – it’s warm, friendly people.

Key strategies to lure visitors to our shores include wide ranging familiarization visits commencing early next week to key tourism areas by prominent Travel Wholesalers, Travel Agents and Trade Press to demonstrate first hand the experiences Fiji has to offer. This will be followed up by great value holiday deals initially in the key source markets of Australia and New Zealand driven by Tourism Fiji and its partners.

In a meeting with the Minister for Tourism on Monday, the Minister reinforced his support for the industry and assured stakeholders that Government will facilitate road upgrading and other necessary infrastructure works to key Tourism areas as a priority. Government recognizes the resilience of the Tourism industry, its ability to quickly facilitate economic recovery, and its widespread importance to the local community.

The private sector continues to invest heavily in the industry with new hotel developments coming on line this year and new routes being opened up by Air Pacific.

Fiji’s Tourism Industry offers a wide range of Holiday experiences for local and international tourists, and support to Fiji’s tourism industry is critical to generate important foreign exchange enabling assistance to areas that have sustained damage by flooding.

The Tourism industry acknowledges and thanks the support offered by Government and global industry partners and will continue to cooperate closely with key stakeholders to achieve targeted visitor arrivals. The industry also realizes the importance of working with the media and seeks their support in the recovery process.

For further information please contact:

Mr Josefa Tuamoto
Chief Executive Officer
Tourism Fiji
Phone: 6722433

Fiji’s Tourism industry has been largely unaffected by the recent flooding

The Fiji Organic Project

It's a big deal when you get the Minister of Finance, the person holding the purse strings for the entire country, to open a meeting. It's an even bigger deal to have him announce that the country's sugar industry, the backbone of the national economy, will thrive if it switches to producing organic sugar.

Thirty-four stakeholders gathered on April 12 and 13 to discuss the potential of the greening of Fiji's sugar industry. The meeting, organized and hosted by The Fiji Organic Project and Sugar Research Institute of Fiji, and sponsored by the Secretariat of the Pacific Community, was a landmark occasion in the history of sugar industry deliberations, as it brought together the most diverse array of constituents that has ever convened to discuss the future of Fiji's sugar industry. Those constituents included environmentalists, tourism officials, NGO leaders, cane farmers, researchers, trade commissioners, academics, students, businesspeople, marine scientists, engineers, economists, doctors, and marketing specialists.

Fiji's sugar industry is at a turning point in its century-long lifespan. Whereas Fiji used to enjoy preferential market access and subsidized prices for decades due to the Lome Convention and Cotonou Agreement, the industry will soon be forced to compete with the likes of Brazil and Australia, as the World Trade Organization has deemed the preferential prices are unlawful under the rules of free trade. Given its small land mass and lack of mechanization, Fiji will simply not be able to compete on the world market if it is forced to sell its sugar conventionally. What Fiji needs is a niche market.

Organic can be that niche. As an industry with a growth rate averaging 20 percent since the 1990s, the demand for organic foods has expanded beyond most food manufacturers' wildest dreams. In fact, there is such great demand for processed organic foods that companies often cannot source enough organic raw ingredients to make their finished products. Food processors hate it when that happens, because it means they can't use the word "organic" on the label and are no longer able to fetch a premium price. With sugar a major ingredient of a large variety of products, from breakfast cereals to chocolate bars, there is an increasing demand for a plentiful supply of organic cane sugar.

What The Fiji Organic Project stresses is that transitioning to organic production would mean much more to Fiji than economic gain, though it would certainly bring that as well. Organic sugar cane production would also promote environmental, cultural, and social sustainability for Fiji.

Sugar has shaped Fiji's history and remains a primary source of income for more than one-third of the rural population. The sugar cane industry dates back to the 1800s, when Indians were brought to Fiji as indentured laborers. The history of Fiji's sugar industry created its present-day demography: nearly half of Fiji's population are Indo-Fijians, Fiji Islanders of Indian descent. Family and social life has been built around the small cane farms. The social and cultural fabric of Fiji's countryside is intricately interwoven with cane farming. If the sugar industry in Fiji crashes (as has been predicted if it stays on its current path), farmers will lose their land, their livelihoods, and their way of life.

At the two-day stakeholders' meeting, Randy Thaman, professor of Pacific Island Biogeography, stressed that the sugar industry is worth much more to Fiji than the income it generates. Cane farming not only provides livelihoods, it also provides housing and food for much of Fiji's rural community. Sugar cane is not the only thing grown on the farms that is vital to people's health and livelihood, Thaman notes. Family gardens are filled with other crops and trees that are grown for food, medicine, religious practices, and aesthetic beauty. Take sugar cane out of the equation, and the people will no longer be able to stay on the land. Without the sugar cane industry in Fiji, there would not only be a large poverty and unemployment problem, there would also be a major housing crisis.

Thaman stressed the need to shift to sustainable methods of production to maintain the ecological balance of Fiji's delicate island ecosystems. Fiji is a small island nation, so issues of water scarcity and marine pollution are of paramount importance. Run-off of synthetic fertilizers and chemical pesticides from agricultural areas into nearby rivers and streams presents serious environmental and public health problems and monocultural cultivation (i.e. growing a single crop, rather than a diversified cropping system) creates soil erosion and decreases biodiversity.

The environmental consequences of sugar cane production are not confined to the actual growing of the cane. Milling the sugar is one of the greatest contributors to environmental degradation in cane-growing areas. Due to the lack of environmental legislation in Fiji, sugar mills dump large quantities of wastewater into nearby waterways. These nitrogen-rich waste byproducts have been blamed for causing algal blooms that have triggered fish kills in rivers where the wastewater is discharged. Research Officer Rupeni Tamanikaiyaroi of the Sugar Research Institute of Fiji explained to constituents how mill mud, bagasse, and other mill waste byproducts could be used as fertilizer for the cane fields. In an organic production system, off-farm inputs are minimized, and waste is used productively as a source of fertility, mimicking nature's cycles.

Full news article here: The Fiji Organic Project | Earth Island Journal | Find Articles at BNET