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In a bid to improve on its already green reputation, the tourist board of Denmark’s capital, Copenhagen, is offering tourists treats for trash.
Starting Monday, the city is trialing a scheme under which tourist attractions across the city will offer free meals, train tickets and museum tours to visitors who participate in sustainable activities such as picking up trash or taking green transportation options, such as bikes.
The initiative, which the tourist board calls “CopenPay,” is a reward system that transforms “green actions into currency for cultural experiences.” It’s the latest sustainability effort in a city that has long been considered one of the world’s greenest — Copenhagen residents regularly bike to work and swim in its clean canals.
The scheme may also come as a relief to tourists who can find Denmark, with its 25% value added tax rate, an expensive place to visit. According to a poll last year from the Economist Intelligence Unit, Copenhagen is the city with the world’s eighth-highest cost of living.
“We want visitors to make conscious, green choices,” Mikkel Aarø-Hansen, chief executive of Wonderful Copenhagen, said in a statement Monday, “and hopefully end up getting even better experiences.”
With 602,000 people and 750,000 bicycles, Copenhagen has more bikes than people, and the city wants to encourage visitors to travel on two wheels to offset the “environmental burden” of tourism.
The city’s tourist high season runs from July to August, and last year, Denmark recorded 63 million overnight stays, the tourism board said.
To redeem some of the rewards, visitors may be asked to show tickets, arrive by bicycle or take pictures performing the activities. Ultimately, though, it’s an honor system, and officials are trusting the visitors.
“After all,” the tourism board said, “the only one you would be cheating is yourself if you miss out on doing good for our planet.”
Twenty-four attractions have signed up for the initiative’s trial run, which will run until Aug. 11. If visitors to the Copenhagen Museum, for example, arrive on foot or by public transportation, they can enjoy free cups of coffee or glasses of wine at a rooftop bar that overlooks the city.
For more active travelers, free kayak rentals are up for grabs in return for helping clean the harbor, and skiing enthusiasts at the CopenHill slope, which sits on top of a waste-to-energy power plant, can redeem 20 extra minutes of slope time if they arrive by public transportation.
“Tourists are given a unique opportunity to explore Copenhagen in a way that benefits both the environment and the local community,” Mayor Sophie Andersen said.
Mithil Aggarwal is a Hong Kong-based reporter/producer for NBC News.
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