Grand Canyon Railway is proud to take a leadership role within the tourist railroad and hospitality industry in being mindful of our environmental impact. This is no small task when you're working with equipment that was built in the early 1900s in some cases. We are extremely proud to announce that the Railway is ISO 14001 Certified - it applies to those environmental aspects which the organization has control and over which it can be expected to have an influence. ISO 14001 is often seen as the corner stone standard of the ISO 14000 series. However, it is not only the most well known, but is the only ISO 14000 standard against which it is currently possible to be certified by an external certification authority.
The ISO 14001 standard is applicable to any organization that wishes to:
- implement, maintain and improve an environmental management system
- assure itself of its conformance with its own stated environmental policy (those policy commitments of course must be made)
- demonstrate conformance
- ensure compliance with environmental laws and regulations
- seek certification of its environmental management system by an external third party organization
- make a self-determination of conformance
Grand Canyon Railway has taken the steps to become certified and manage a sustainable program going forward. In fact, here is what our company has done:
- Since the inception of our property wide recycling program, we have tripled the amount of recycled material at the same time decreasing the amount of solid waste generated.
- A letter was sent to all vendors to educate them about our environmental practices and encouraging them to use sustainable practices in packing and production.
- We reuse all packing material internally for shipping.
- We are encouraging all vendors to go to paperless billing by emailing invoices.
- We collect all spent assorted batteries from our guests and employees in order to divert these items from the landfill.
- We collect phone books from our employees to divert them from the landfill so that we can help a local company make insulation from the old phone books.
- We collect aerosols from our employees to divert this waste stream from the landfill.
- We collect car batteries from our employees to divert this waste stream from the landfill.
- We supply shuttles to encourage car pooling.
- We use Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel in all our locomotives; this is a much cleaner burning fuel.
- We educate our staff and customers on energy and water conservation measures.
- We have replaced all 2.5 gpm shower heads with a 1.6 gpm low flow shower head.
- We have installed room sensors and timers in many areas throughout the property.
- We are eliminating all large vehicles and replacing them annually with more efficient vehicles.
- We have eliminated all solvents used for cleaning and replaced them with green chemicals.
- All of GCR’s used oil is burned in our heaters at the Commissary and Railway Maintenance Facility.
- We collect electronic waste (E-waste) from our employees to divert this waste stream from the landfill.
- In 2009, we decreased water consumption by 10% from 2008.
And we're not done. Here is a list of current initiatives:
- We are experimenting with burning straight waste vegetable oil (WVO) in our historic steam locomotive.
- We are researching renewable energy sources like solar and wind for the hotel and Railway Maintenance Facility.
- We will be collecting used motor oil from our employees.
- We will be collecting old tires from our employees.
- We will be collecting spent compact florescent lights from our employees.
- Future building will be considered LEED certified (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design).
- We have and continue to do lighting retrofits, converting all incandescent lights to compact florescent lights property wide.
- We have and continue to replace incandescent holiday lighting to light emitting diodes (LED’s).
- We will continue to think of inventive ways to save water.
- We will run a blend of diesel and WVO in our locomotives, continually reducing the amount of hydrocarbons emitted into the atmosphere.
