Our Commitment to Sustainability

At Pacific Coast Lodge, we have a long-standing commitment to recycling and promoting sustainability in the tourism industry. Recently, we were just award the Gold Level by Tauranga’s Resource Wise Program—a huge achievement and one that we’d like to share with you!

Lots of hard work takes place behind the scenes to achieve this, and it would not be possible without our staff and guests working together to create a cleaner, greener New Zealand!

The Resource Wise program aims to work with local businesses in Tauranga to divert and minimize waste which is otherwise going to landfill. We have been with the program since 2019 and have now worked our way up to the Gold Level. The Gold Level means that we divert 70% of all our waste from going into landfill! Amazing right? We had our waste and recycling bins audited by a private company—they went through our rubbish bag by bag to see what was and wasn’t being recycled properly. That works out to over 13,500 kgs we saved from the landfill, successfully sorting, and organizing into the correct recycling avenue.

If you have ever visited our hostel, you would have noticed our color-coded recycling bins in the kitchen. We contribute this to a lot of our success with recycling, as it’s easy to see and know where your waste can be sorted into. We also collaborate with a local pig farmer who picks up our food scraps twice a week (over 3,000 kgs of food scraps are sent to the pigs each year!). Cardboard, aluminum, tin cans, and certain plastics are all forms of waste that we recycle here at PCL. Our cleaners individually sort through each room’s waste bin to remove what can be recycled, then placing in the correct recycling bin. It can be a gross job sorting through waste, so we applaud our cleaners for all their hard mahi (work) at the hostel!

Our next goal is to achieve the Platinum Level of the program, which would mean we will need to divert 85% of our waste from landfill…and we think we can definitely achieve this, with the help of our staff and guests alike! Our friendly staff at reception are always open to new avenues of sustainability. If you are feeling inspired and looking for new ways your can help lighten your waste, come and chat to us—we are passionate about what we do and are proud that Pacific Coast Lodge and Backpackers reflects our values on sustainability!

Our motto is “Refuse, reuse, recycle – TRAVEL – repeat!”

Come and stay at our award-winning Mount Backpackers and see for yourself!