Introduction
Change is difficult. New ideas don’t always work. Overcoming the inertia of the status quo can feel like a Herculean effort. But on a cool September day in 2009, as a team and as a company, Xanterra did something inspirational and sophisticated, sustainable and also symbolic.
On this day, Xanterra moved a 19th-century, inefficient steam locomotive “dinosaur” out of the “Jurassic era” and into the 21st century by retrofitting it to run on a renewable energy source – while also preserving its historic character.
Spawned by passion and conceived by ingenuity, this train runs on 100 percent clean-burning and renewable waste vegetable oil, a Xanterra waste product generated just a few miles away in the kitchens at the Grand Canyon. With an odd aroma of french fries in the air – instead of a black cloud of smoke – engine No. 4960 chugged away from the Grand Canyon Railway depot toward a world of new possibilities.
For Xanterra, this train is a living example of what sustainability looks like in the real world: unexpected partnerships, a new aesthetic paradigm, and technological advances with a nod to the past. It is among our proudest accomplishments as a business – one that operates in some of the most beautiful places on earth: our national and state parks. It symbolizes our acknowledgement that we must take responsibility for finding cleaner ways of operating our resorts and that our contribution to climate change must be addressed. It reveals a business strategy that sees clean energy in the tourism industry as smart and profitable.
Globally, if 6 billion humans on this planet are going to continue to add carbon and generate other wastes, we will need to develop regenerative ways of living and conducting business. As a people, we need to reach beyond current science and conventional ways of thinking to transform our society. As a company, we need to change our whole system: our sourcing, packaging, transportation, buildings, food, retail, accounting systems, and employees’ lifestyles.
The renewable fuel that powers this train, which operates on special occasions (five to seven days per year), represents only a drop in the bucket relative to the resources we use as a company. But, it’s one of many efforts from the sustainability trenches in Xanterra’s long-term mission to balance being both environmentally sustainable and economically viable.
Welcome to Xanterra’s fourth-edition Environmental Sustainability Report.
Full steam ahead!
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