About Us

PFSEA helps you bring your team on the sustainability journey, so that you attract more loyal customers and staff.

Your trusted sustainability advisors

Specialising in the tourism sector with a focus on hotels, we operate in Southeast Asia and Australia to help you apply sustainability in your business in an authentic and transparent way. Ensuring that your sustainability policy is more than just words on a piece of paper or link on your website.

Sustainable Solutions

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Team Engagement

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Partnership

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Strategy

At PFSEA, we help break down the big picture of sustainability so you can take effective steps and make a positive impact. Our offerings include advisory services, accountability partnerships to help you achieve your goals, and an educational and behaviour change training program. All of these are designed to accelerate your business’s sustainability objectives and boost your success.

We Understand Hotels

Our expertise in the tourism and hospitality sector spans more than two decades, meaning we understand your business and can help you take your sustainability initiatives to the next level.

People we've taught

Businesses we've helped

When you’re busy running a hotel or tour company, the constant pressure of being more sustainable can feel overwhelming. There are so many different terms to describe sustainability, how can you know what’s really going to make a difference? And how do you get your team to understand?? Often the most challenging part for tourism managers isn’t the lack of interest or motivation in doing things more sustainably, it’s the frustration of caring so much but feeling like your team don’t care at all.

You’ve likely been trying to get through to them for years and now you get ‘that look’ every time you mention cutting down on plastics, recycling better or changing consumption. Your team feel like you want to take things away from them or they’re just too busy to really lean in and rely on ‘this is how we’ve always done things’ thinking to avoid the topic. It’s more common than you think and there is a way to get through that will break this cycle. 

PFSEA helps your business make effective, lasting change in sustainability. We establish your businesses eco baseline and bring your team to the table to understand the ‘why’ behind sustainability. Together we create the goals and roadmap for your team to successfully implement and maintain environmentally impactful operations.

After moving to Cambodia in 2014, Sarah started Plastic Free Southeast Asia in early 2015. She holds a Masters in Tourism Management, is a trained ‘Climate Leader’ and ‘Blue Standard Consultant’ and she’s used these qualifications to help develop the PFSEA methodologies that have helps so many businesses change how they operate for the better.

In Southeast Asia, focusing on plastic pollution seems obvious and the huge advantage is that visibility of the pollution, it’s one that’s easy to relate to and therefore a great place to start when it comes to educating teams in the tourism sector. The sector relies on a clean environment to continue to attract travellers and the staff in hotels and tour companies can be great influencers in helping travellers reduce their environmental footprint when they’re visiting. Travellers want to travel sustainability (regularly cited as 80%+ in booking.com’s annual visitor surveys), yet they often don’t stay long enough to figure out how to do that themselves. They need local businesses to take this step for them and help them leave less waste during their stay.

In Australia, the waste is much ‘better’ hidden away and we have an inflated reputation as being green and eco friendly as a nation. However, we’re one of the highest consuming nations per capita and have a long way to go to be truly sustainable. Single-use culture is stronger in Australia than ever and it’s time we stepped up and demonstrated that we’re accountable too.

PFSEA was established to help tourism businesses to make a meaningful impact across environment, social and economic contributions to the sector and their people. We know that running a tourism business is all-consuming, we’re here to help you embed sustainability seamlessly into your operations so that it’s just ‘the way you do things’, resulting in a positive impact on your people and the planet, giving your staff extra pride in where they work and your guests something special during their visit.

Where it began…

Starting in 2015, we’ve evolved alongside the growing importance of hotels and travel businesses to embark on meaningful environmental and social actions whilst maintaining economic sustainability, especially in recent years. From humble beginnings, we continue to deliver value in helping you reach your sustainability goals. Whether you’re needing advice on where to begin, or a valued partner to continue your journey, you don’t have to work it out alone.

Our Team

Our founder Sarah has navigated the ups and downs of starting a for-purpose business in a world where charities tend to take the lead in the environmental space. With 2 amazing freelance trainers in Cambodia (Sai and Chenda) and growing, PFSEA aim to deliver local support in native languages with relevant cultural context. Sarah’s wide-ranging network means we can adapt to deliver projects and support across the region. We proudly acknowledge the support of our VA Emma from The Eco Collab

Sarah Rhodes

Sarah Rhodes

Founder

Chenda Yen

Chenda Yen

Training facilitator, Phnom Penh

Sai Huntly

Sai Huntly

Training facilitator, Siem Reap