Theme parks, resorts, and events draw many local people and many tourists to one or several locations everyday. These people perform many activities and consume many foods and water; they also create a significant amount of noise, waste and traffic congestion. Therefore, they have imposed large amount of negative impact on the environment which may create irreversible harm.
With this large scale human gatherings, some of the world class organizations recognize the effect of the environment deterioration and develop green programs to preserve our environment. In many cases, green program and green practices give organizations a competitive edge to promote the theme parks, resorts, and events. More and more people want to be part of the process of preserving the environment.
The purpose of this paper is to develop a guideline for greening practices for theme parks, resorts, and events. Some of the world class theme parks and resorts and world events have adopted a wide range of greening practices, for instance, waste reduction and recycling programs, water and energy conservation programs, and utilizing and selling environmentally friendly consumer products. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has introduced a draft of environmental standards named ISO14001 for any organization (Chernushenko, 1996).
However, there is not a complete set of guideline for theme parks, resorts, and events available to such developers. And sometimes the guideline is too vague or brief, so there is not much guidance for such developers. In fulfilling the need of such guideline, this paper is going to look at several theme parks, resorts (including hotels), and events, and to examine their existing green programs and results, and also to look into their similarities in order to develop a complete set of guidelines for future theme parks, resorts, and events developments.
Considering the purpose stated above, the objectives of this paper can be categorized as follows:
(1) to examine the current situation -- The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the Environmental Media Association, and Green Seal has developed an Environmental Production Guide (EPG) particularly for the Entertainment Industry, in which it helps in establishing environmental programs and provides information on how to produce films and television programmes in a good environmental manner. We will look at what guidelines the EPG offers to the industry. Then, the environmental guidelines for Canadian Golf Clubs will be examined;
(2) we then examine existing green practices of the planning and developmental stages at several theme parks, such as Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Film Productions, and Universal Studio, several resorts, such as Canadian Pacific Hotels, Walt Disney Resorts, and golf courses, and world class events, such as Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, Salt Lake City 2002 Winter Olympic Games, and Nagano 1998 Winter Olympic Games;
(3) by using the above place and event examples, we then individually examine and analyze existing green practices at theme parks, resorts and events for the following environmental issues:
(4) after examining existing green practices for theme parks, resorts, and events, we will have learned many possible green practices with current technology available that would help in preserving the environment; we will then make practical recommendations to develop a guideline for future developments. As David Chernushenko said that "The entire industry can take a lesson from these leaders and implement the necessary steps and policies to bring along the slow-pokes." (Chernushenko, 1996, p.32)
After having detailed examination of existing green practices, we have seen that there are a lot of ways to help preserve the environment which includes simple procedures such as transplanting certain grass to other area or buy in bulk and highly advanced technology such as hybrid bus or Disney's Water Hyacinth Project. We attempt to look at the industry leaders in theme parks and resorts market and the organizers of world class events; as they are the representatives in their fields with leadership roles, they have adequate resources allocated to employ state-of-the-art technologies and taken the initiative to deal with the environmental issues. Thus, we hope that the best green practices are selected, and a complete set of guidelines is prepared for future developers of theme parks and resorts and organizing committee of events.
Here are the guidelines for green practices for theme parks, resorts, and events that divided into eight major areas:
Planning Stage
In summary, although this set of green practices guideline is designed for theme parks, resorts, and events, it is suitable for some other industries as well, such as home building industry, transportation industry, etc. We believe that these guidelines should be able to assist future developers of theme parks, resorts, events and some other industries in creating their own green practice programmes. Use it and preserve our environment!