Bus company makes eco-friendly move

Tourism transport operator InterCity Group has pledged to become the first national transport company in New Zealand to make all of its operations carbon neutral by 2010.

"We are on-track to having our operations certified carboNZero this year and the rest of our national tourism and transport operation certified within three years", said the company.

The company has signed up to Landcare Research's CarboNZero monitoring programme.

It can take several years to attain CarboNZero certification and those accredited must keep monitoring and managing their CO2 emissions and reporting their results each year for independent auditing.

"Over the past five years we have significantly reduced our carbon footprint by spending $20 million on modernising our fleet and voluntarily meeting European emission standards - we are not just paying lip service to this issue," said InterCity CEO Malcolm Johns.

InterCity also operates the Newmans Coach Lines brand.