Barcelona Hosts Environment Awareness Activities

Turisme de Barcelona’s From Barcelona: Let’s Care for the Planet campaign is well under way. The campaign launched on World Environment Day on 5 June runs for nine days and includes a variety of activities designed to raise awareness of environmental issues. The activities are based across Barcelona and are open to anyone whether they are local people, tourists, or members of the travel trade.

For the third year running, Turisme de Barcelona will be delivering a series of initiatives, through its Barcelona Sustainable Tourism (BST) programme, designed to highlight sustainability and respect for the environment. These include the distribution of tourist information, advice on recycling and discounts on sightseeing activities.

During the week, staff specialising in sustainability issues will be working at Turisme de Barcelona’s information offices in Plaça de Catalunya and at the Columbus Monument. Together with the offices in several natural parks, they will distribute informative material with discounts on sightseeing activities and tips on making your stay in the city more sustainable. The office in Plaça de Catalunya will feature a Solidarity Wall, a 2 metre-high panel where people are invited to write messages to raise awareness of environmental issues or sign their names under the slogan “From Barcelona: Let’s Care for the Planet”.

The Barcelona Bus Turístic audio guide headphones have a label requesting passengers to put their headphones in the recycling bins once they have finished with them. The Fundació Rubricatus, a special centre for people with disabilities, labels and packages the headphones.

Turisme de Barcelona will hand out notepads with information and tips about sustainable measures and recycling. It also features discounts, including 20% off the Barcelona Walking Tours (Gothic, modernism and gourmet) and 50% off the Easy Walking Tour of the Gothic Quarter. The notepad is made from 100% recycled paper and can be downloaded here.

Barcelona is the first city in the world to be awarded Biosphere World Class Destination certification, which recognises the city as a sustainable tourism destination committed to developing responsible tourism. Barcelona is working on the new Biosphere Barcelona standard to further develop aspects of its certification and enable it to play a pioneering role in applying new requirements in favour of sustainable tourism in cities. The Barcelona City Council through the companies and associations of the network Barcelona + Sostenible and Turisme de Barcelona are joining in the World Environment Day organizing activities and opening doors to citizens and visitors.

The Barcelona + Sostenible network propose to share experiences in the social media with the hashtags #bcnsostenible and #diamediambient. Turisme de Barcelona uses the hashtag #barcelonacares4theplanet.