Biosphere is the certification scheme —hereinafter, EEC-Biosphere, or simply the Biosphere Scheme—created by the Responsible Tourism Institute (RTI), a body established in 1997 under a founding memorandum of understanding with UNESCO to drive sustainability in the tourism sector.
A conformity assessment scheme is not just a document containing the criteria and certification levels that can be obtained. It is the complete set of rules governing the whole process: what is assessed (the Scheme's criteria and levels), how the audit must be carried out (the methodology, the independence required of the audit team, the evidence that must be provided) and how compliance is monitored once the certificate has been granted (the validity periods, the conditions for renewing, suspending or withdrawing it).
The Responsible Tourism Institute owns the Biosphere Scheme and its visual identity, being the only body competent for its development, review and updating. In this way, the RTI concentrates its work on developing, reviewing and updating the Biosphere scheme's criteria, and entrusts the assessment of compliance with it to a separate and independent body, unconnected to the drafting of the scheme.
At Biosphere Responsible Tourism (BRT) we are the body that independently audits and certifies your compliance with the Biosphere Scheme. We assess your evidence, verify your sustainability actions and decide on your certification without the involvement of the Responsible Tourism Institute (ITR), the owner of the scheme. That independence is not a formality: it is what gives your certificate its weight, because it is signed by someone unconnected to you and also unconnected to whoever designed the criteria you meet, which is known as third-party certification.
To support you throughout the whole process, we make available to you our digital platform, Biosphere Sustainable, where you will find all the information about the Biosphere Scheme you need to manage and document, at your own pace, your sustainability actions. In this way, the certification process with our assessment services can be carried out 100% online, as permitted by the Biosphere Scheme. Using this platform, and registering your user account and your entity's profile (business or destination management body), is completely free of charge.
When you decide to take the step of having your documentation assessed, you will be able to hire our services for an annual fee of €359 which includes the external online audits required by the certification process, both the audit for the Committed level and for the Certified level, at no additional cost. Thus, you document your sustainability actions, submit them to external audit and, once you pass that verification, we issue you with the certificate and the Biosphere seal for the level and scope you have demonstrated, in accordance with the levels defined in the Biosphere Scheme.
With all of this, the Biosphere seal becomes, for your customers, partners and the rest of the world, a clear mark of identity: a mark that certifies, within the verified scope, that the information you publish is not a claim of your own, but the result of a genuine verification, carried out by an independent third party.
With our platform Biosphere Sustainable, you can complete the certification process independently and 100% online.
• Register your user and create your entity's profile on our platform Biosphere Sustainable for free
• View the basic criteria of the Biosphere Scheme (Starters) without making any payment
• Find out what documentation is required for each basic criterion of the Biosphere Scheme
• Learn how to upload and manage the information on your actions on the Biosphere Sustainable platform
• Pay the annual fee (€359) for our certification services, through our platform's payment gateway
• The fee includes 1 online audit of basic (Starters) criteria - Committed level, and 1 corrective audit if necessary
• With the Committed level, access a more extensive catalog for the Certified level
• The fee includes an online audit of the Certified level criteria, and 1 corrective audit if necessary
• Document your sustainability actions (upload photos, invoices…)
• Manage your profile individually or as a team, with unlimited user access at no additional cost
• Meet the minimum criteria for each level to receive the applicable external online audit
• Pass these assessment processes and receive the certificate for your demonstrated level and scope, with your profile in our public repository Biosphere Sustainable