Awards & Press

Sustainable Tourism Award presented by Explore Minnesota

The Sustainable Tourism Award is presented to the person, company, or institution that supports outstanding efforts to sustain, protect and enhance Minnesota’s environment while promoting its tourism markets. .

"Our next award this evening is another first-time award. The award is being presented to celebrate one of the fastest growing trends in the tourism industry and to highlight the importance of this segment in the marketplace, it’s called The Sustainable Tourism Award and here is the award criteria. The Sustainable Tourism Award is presented to the person, company, or institution that supports outstanding efforts to sustain, protect and enhance Minnesota’s environment while promoting its tourism markets. The recipient must demonstrate a clear connection between their endeavors and tourism and must also demonstrate exceptional performance in areas such as resource conservation, performance efficiency and increased employee and guest awareness of sustainable tourism practices. The winner is a resort and outfitter.

Listen to the measures our award winner takes at their resort:
Water is conserved with low flush toilets, water saver showerheads and other devices. The resort has a sophisticated pretreatment sewer system that collects waste from around the resort, it is then pumped to pretreatment wetlands and eventually to alternating drain fields 800' to 1,300' back from the lake. Prior to the opening of the season, the resort sanitizes the well and the entire water system to every faucet of every cabin and every faucet of possible human consumption.With the assistance of the guests, the resort re-cycles and pays to have garbage hauled nearly 90 miles from the resort. The resort is converting to low watt florescent light bulbs, uses biodegradable and safe cleaning products and is exploring the addition of adding solar power to supplement some of their energy needs.They have already have a table tent on the kitchen table of each cabin describing their efforts.

This year they will be adding to all guest arrival packages information about "invasive species" as listed with the DNR. They have always handled the launching of all guests boats so they’ve been self-policing any way but they feel it’s necessary guest information. In their "youth quest" program they’ll be sharing with their younger guests the resorts sustainability philosophy along with north country lore and they try to impart to the kids a personal awareness of the environment. They encourage younger guests to "keep your radar on" for safety and conservation opportunities. The bottom line is this resort is conscious of - and deals responsibly with - the environment. This amazingly committed Resort also works to ensure that their guests are aware of their sustainability efforts through their website. Let’s have a sustained round of applause for the winner of the first ever Sustainable Tourism Award, Northern Lights Resort & Outfitters. Accepting the award will be Tom and Pat Ossell, owners of Northern Lights Resort Outfitting and Youth Quest."

Northern Lights Reviewed on 10000likes.com

http://10000likes.blogspot.com/2010/09/minnesotas-family-resorts-dont-miss-out.html