industry

Two sustainability mantras from the House of Gucci movie

What can the House of Gucci movie teach us about sustainability? WhiteWater’s Una de Boer tells all

I was flying home from a trip yesterday and watched House of Gucci. I choose my plane movies by assessing the likely enthusiasm my husband would have to watch together, and House of Gucci would not pass his body count test, therefore safe for solo viewing. This is not a movie review (although Lady Gaga was very good); two quotes resonated with me, and I think they are very relevant to consider as sustainability mantras this Earth Day/year/decade.



The image is of a WhiteWater slide installed in 1992 (so long ago I was in high school!) at a park in Sao Paulo, which has been operating reliably year-round for 600,000 guests annually ever since. WhiteWater is about to go in and re-gelcoat it to give it a bright new lease of life for another decade or two, we hope.

I help lead WhiteWater’s sustainability initiatives because, like most of us, I worry the impact of what I do for a living will have an effect on the world long after I’m gone. Fibreglass lasts a lifetime, or it should if you buy high quality. The durability of our product well cared for means it’s a better investment for parks and the planet than alternatives which need replacing so much sooner. Like “fast fashion,” we need to move away from cheap throwaway alternatives and focus on long-lasting quality that always stays in style.



As with International Women’s Day, I do fear that this Earth Week, many companies post about sustainability to posture a position for marketing purposes instead of reflecting cultural truths for their organisations.

At WhiteWater, sustainability is a standing agenda item at our regular companywide “Let’s Talk” meetings to update on the progress the four sustainability working groups (aligned with our four scorecard areas) are making.



We’ve appreciated Earth Week activities for the whole company this week, which involved our corporate charity, Swim Drink Fish, to educate our head office employees about waterborne microplastic removal and the research WhiteWater helps fund. Yet I was fearful of being accused of greenwashing when WhiteWater made public over a year ago our sustainability commitments because it’s audacious for a manufacturer to be carbon-neutral by 2040. However, I knew we could prove the systematic approach we’d already started to help us get there - the benchmark to know where the starting line is that we measure progress against and the different initiatives for each area of our Sustainability Scorecard we’ve enacted.

So, I do question when I see some companies’ sponsored sustainability content. Is their approach as wholistic ours? Or is this paying lip service to a cause that is thankfully gaining momentum in our industry?



I don’t want “green” to leave a bitter taste in people’s mouths because of “spin,” as it’ll breed a cynicism that we have to avoid if we are going to push for urgent carbon reduction changes within the attractions industry as well as in this world as a whole. But I have seen positive developments recently: in the greenloop sessions and during the TEA Summit, where a panel with Universal and Disney spoke of the “huge importance of sustainability.”

Talks like these signal that as an industry, we’re starting to recognise that now is the time for action, not just words.

I’m hopeful.