Sustainability Statement

Kia ora

Our vision here at Carter Observatory is that:

"Carter Observatory will use the science, heritage and culture

of the Southern skies to excite, engage and inspire".

We are committed to ensuring our Southern skies remain visible to generations to come, and part of that is to ensure that we operate in a way that does as little harm to our environment as possible.

What we are doing

We currently have a number of initiatives in place aimed at reducing our negative impacts on the environment. These initiatives include:

• Measuring and monitoring our energy use, with aims to reduce this by at least 5 % over the next 12 months.
• Reducing the amount of waste we’re sending to landfill by working with the Botanic Gardens to compost our food scraps.
• Purchasing local and sustainably sourced products wherever possible.

Dark Skies

The Carter Observatory believes in the importance of the New Zealand night time environment in terms of the cultural, historic, educational, scientific and recreational importance of the stars, other night time phenomena, and the geographic uniqueness of New Zealand at night.

We support Dark Skies initiatives and have a planned approach to address our own external lighting and are committed to educating the public on the value of our Dark Skies.

Inspiring our Community

Our involvement in our community is a big part of who we are. We regularly support charity organisations and contribute to various community groups in the form of free admissions, donations and occassional free use of our facilities.

Clikc here to find out more about how we inspire our community.

We hope you enjoy your time at Carter Observatory. We are very excited to share the stories of our unique skies with you.  We are always looking to add new initiatives to our list, so please feel free to let us know your ideas.

We hope to welcome you back to Carter Observatory soon.

Naku noa, na

The team at
Carter Observatory                                        Date: December 2011

Download a copy of our Sustainability Statement here