Green tourism GTBS Silver award environmentally friendly farm holiday cottages near Padstow
Lavender at The Lost Gardens of Heligan

Green tourism & the environment

We moved to Trevorrick Farm because we fell in love with it's beautiful location on a lovely February day in 2001  and we believe that many of our guests are visiting Cornwall, and Trevorrick Farm, because of that natural beauty. We don't wish to get on an environmental "high horse" on green issues, but we do believe that as individuals we can all influence the environment around us and collectively can make a major difference to the benefit (or otherwise) of our environment.  We hope that our guests can share in that vision, even if they are "on holiday".

Whilst not wishing to compromise the quality of our accommodation and holiday experience, our aim is to ensure, as far as possible, that our activities have minimal impact on the environment. We encourage our guests to be environmentally aware through initiatives such as recycling, energy efficiency, and the purchase of environmentally friendly products and local products and services.

We support, use and promote local produce, food, drink & crafts.

Reduce

We are committed to reducing our energy demands. We have a policy to buy energy efficient products when a product is beyond repair, but do try to repair products in the first instance.

We source products locally where practical and from environmentally aware outlets. There is an excellent farm shop near Padstow, another at St Kew and there is also an excellent local Coop store in Wadebridge selling Fair Trade products. We are trialling a new service called " Food4MyHoliday", which will deliver a wide range of Cornish food products to your door on arrival day.

We provide comprehensive information on tourist attractions to help plan and get the best from your holiday. We also have a list of local places to eat, sources of local farm produce, local events, bus timetables and information on walks and cycle rides from our doorstep.

We promote walking into Padstow to our guests - as it is only 2.25 miles, around 45 minutes - and our children have been covering the 4.5 mile return journey unaided (apart from gentle encouragement!) since they were 3 years old. We can lend child front carriers and child back packs. The excellent Pickwick Inn is only a 10 minute walk along our lane.- We are keen cyclists ourselves and use our cycles wherever practical for local journeys. Our school run utilises a kiddie back tandem and trailer and many of our guests enjoy cycling along the Camel Trail. Bike hire is readily available in Padstow and Wadebridge, which saves the hassle of bringing your own.

Electricity is on a competitive tariff and is charged at cost (12.5p per unit), based on actual usage for the duration of our guest's stay. We believe this is fairest to all our guests,  and whilst allowing guests control over how much they use,  is the best aid to careful consumption. In order that guests can monitor, (and possibly reflect!), on how much they are using during their stay, electricity is on a �1 meter, so that there are no nasty surprises at the end of the week. Background heating is by night storage heating on an Economy 7 tariff, supplemented, if required, by additional electric fire heating, including low wattage panel heaters. Night storage heating is included in the price throughout the year, as required. We have wood burning fireplaces/efficient log burners in 5 out of 6 cottages for that extra cosiness in the winter. We instruct our guests personally on their efficient usage. We have provided energy efficient lighting wherever practical, and dimmer switches in children's bedrooms or where ambiance is required. All cottages have had the loft insulation upgraded to at least 8" (200mm). Hot water is provided by immersion heaters which are controlled by Electrisaver timer boost switches, so that they cannot be left on indefinitely. All bathrooms have good quality thermostatic showers, as well as baths.

Water consumption is reduced by the use of dual flush cisterns on most toilets, and on older cisterns waters savers. Mains water is not used for any watering of plants or home grown vegetables.

We have an efficient thermal cover for our heated swimming pool which we ask is kept on the pool when it is not being used by guests. We do not open the pool over the winter, when usage would be less and heating costs would be very high, although we appreciate that this does lose us some winter business.

We reduce our printing demands by wherever possible communicating by email, and not printing out paperwork wherever possible.

We support the local community with our involvement in the Community Association which helps (amongst other things) promote local producers and services. We source our milk and eggs from our local milkman and encourage our guests to make use of this doorstep local service.

We aim to use Eco-friendly cleaning products, bio-degradable bin liners and sacks and avoid purchasing products with unnecessary packaging.

Reuse

We reuse products and equipment where practical whilst maintaining our high quality standards. With the growth of the internet, we are more easily able to source parts to replace a broken washing machine door or a fridge door seal.

Batteries in remote controls and torches all use rechargeable batteries.

Rain water is collected in water butts. We also have a well and hand pump so even during the driest of summers we have plenty of water for plants.

Organic waste (except cooked foods and meats) we encourage to be put in one of our compost bins along with our garden waste. Spoilt fruit and vegetable scraps we encourage to be placed in a bin for feeding to our rabbits, ducks or pigs. 

We try to buy kitchen and toilet rolls that are made from recycled products, or from environmentally managed sources.

 

We use an ever popular and good quality "Poole pottery" tableware pattern in all our cottages so that individual items broken can always be replaced.

Recycle

Where products cannot be reused, we recycle wherever possible and encourage our guests to do the same. We ask for the following to be separated by guests, which we then take to Wadebridge for recycling:

Paper, cardboard, glass, cans, tin foil, plastic bottles and carrier bags.

We do hope our guests will help us in this, as otherwise we can't resist fishing recyclables out of the tops of dustbins - good for the environment but not really very pleasant for us!

We have found a local recycling point for household used batteries too, and are happy to collect these on your behalf.

In addition, any 'scrap' metals (lead, brass, copper) we have are collected and sold to a scrap metal merchant.

When replacing items in cottages we give the old items to village jumble sales for local causes, and rather than taking larger items such as old but still serviceable items, eg sofas, to the tip, we advertise them locally as "free to collector".

Respect of the environment

We support and are members of local environment projects including the Cornwall Wildlife Trust, the Barn Owl Trust and the Cyclists' Touring Club. We participate in the Walkers Welcome and Cyclists Welcome schemes. We are members of CoaST (the Cornwall sustainable tourism project) and the Green Tourism Business Scheme. We have had barn owls nesting in our boxes for the last five years and we have now installed an "Owlcam". We, and our cottage guests (through our local area network), can now watch our female owl roosting in her box and we just hope she has owlets again this year. We have bird boxes and bat boxes too. 

We welcome any suggestions about how our environmental policy can be further improved.