Hello Purple friends!
Helene here, for a bit of an unusual post (disponible en français ici). Blunt honesty is one of my strong suits I am told, so I am about to give you a bit of that today :) Here is a sneaky look at what happens behind the scenes of running our dive shop, this time on a specific topic, very dear to my heart.
Our goal as an environmental-friendly dive centre
We want to protect the oceans. We love diving, we love the sea and its life, and we see first-hand every day how they are impacted. We are also acutely aware that our business has some impact on the said marine environment, which is a struggle that sometimes keeps me up at night (but let's not get down that rabbit hole of the things that keep me up at night).
We had all these ideas when we started this business about how to help our local marine environment but along the way we realised that we lack the time, manpower or even skills to achieve some of these things. We were also a starting business right before a 2 year pandemic that forced us to rescale or change directions in order to survive, so we had some more pressing issues at hand.
I have also learnt over the last 10 years that the solution to our current environmental and climate change problems is not "one size fits all". People do things in different ways, with different means, at a different pace.
But what we had in mind when we started this was to give back to the marine environment that we love so much by running clean ups, coral monitoring projects and more. We feel that we did a good job so far in terms of limiting plastics on site, recycling our water, teaching diving in the best way possible to create ocean advocates, and more.
Even so, by the end of 2022 which is our first “almost back to normal year”, the amount of things we are getting done is not amounting to a list that we are happy about.
So we took a hard look in the mirror (over a couple of beers, that's how Julia and I run our "shareholder's meetings") and we agreed we were not matching our own expectations. So we decided to take a different route.
Why did we choose 1% for the Planet?
Starting in January 2023, we are proud to be a member of 1% for the Planet network.
In short, it means that 1% of our turnover goes to NGOs dedicated to protecting the environment.
We already individually support organisations that we believe in. So doing this was the next logical step for us, in a "put your money where your mouth is" sort of way. We chose 1% for the Planet for their transparency, commitment, and network of organisations. We didn’t want to vaguely promise to do something and not be held accountable for it, like I have seen on so many websites.
This is what 1% for the Planet does:
They check our certified accounts at the end of the year and confirm that we keep our commitment of giving 1% of our turnover. Accountability for us is key: we stick to what we agreed to, and you know for sure that 1% of your spending with us is going towards environmental protection.
With our membership fee (a prerequisite to join), they support and encourage a wide network of businesses to get on board with their marketing and actions.
They have a wide selection of approved NGOs that went through a screening process. We can choose to give to any organisation in that list as long as we meet our goal and prove the donations.
We can submit new NGOs for that screening process that we think are doing valuable things for the environment and we plan on helping local Indonesian organisations that do good things here to get on board and benefit from that network.
While there are plenty of worthy causes, their focus is on environmental protection and this is our main goal (aside from promoting women in diving, but I think we do that on a daily basis by different means!)
For the sake of transparency, we will share later this year the NGOs we are donating to, and maybe we can inspire you to do the same!
In any case, rest assured that 1% of every dollar you spend with us is going towards environmental protection. This is our 2023 resolution!
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