Wednesday - Rotorua – Today we toured Rotorua Aquatic center and learned of their sustainability initiatives. Center built in 2005 and not operated initially as a sustainable operation. However, in 2007 a new director was brought in the encouraged the staff to create sustainable initiatives. Geothermal, automated humidity control, recycling, garden, tracking of all resource usage per customer. Here this was a grass roots initiative. There was no government agency mandating compliance with standards or any penalties. It was simply one guy who was in charge that wanted to run things in a way that was responsible. Each year they voluntarily publish a report on their water usage, electricity usage and waste generation and break it down to a per customer amount in order to track year over year whether becoming more efficient or less and can take meaningful steps towards better efficiency. One of the interesting things that really bore out of this tour was that sustainability is not a formula, some things work some places, but not others; so you have to be willing to take stock of your resources and think creatively. Rotorua is located near a volcano, so they have the unique feature of naturally heated earth beneath their surface. The Acquatic center took advantage of this feature by running a geothermal loop into the ground where they pump their pool water through to heat it. So, they have heated pools in the winter time at no additional electricity or gas cost and no waste or pollution is being generated to provide the heat.
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