Going Green @ Home Farm Hotel
October 2009
Well, the time has finally come! Responsibilities have to be faced and changes have to be made! Our planet is being badly damaged by many of the choices that we make in our everyday lives and now, before it is too late, we want to do something to change that.
What follows is our way ahead. You may call it our "Environmental Policy" if you like, but bureacracy is not the answer to our problems. The answer lies in our motivation, our choices and our determination to follow them through.
We hope that you will like what we are doing!
What is "Green"?
Before we start to describe the things we will be doing, it is important to understand the different levels of "Green".
In order to be truly green, it would be necessary to do everything that is physically possible to reduce our impact on the environment. In its final analysis, that would mean such things as digging for well water, installing banks of solar panels and installing bio-mass boilers. Sadly, these things may be technically possible, they are not yet economically viable.
Instead, our approach is to be "Responsibly Green". This means being aware of what we are doing and how we can make all of those small changes that add up to a very big difference. For you, as our guest, it means that we will still be providing you with the comfort you expect, but that you can relax and enjoy your stay knowing that your impact on our environment will be gentle.
Our green mission will include considerable encouragement to our guests to make similar changes in their own lives and, hopefully, to make a far bigger difference than we can do alone.
Who knows? We may even persuade you to take some tips home with you and make a few small changes yourself!
What Are We Changing?
The simple asnwer is that we will change what we can, when we can, when we discover that we can change it! This is not just a project for today. Indeed, it can't be done in a day! It is not a quest for a certificate to hang on our wall. It is a complete change of awareness that will lead to continual review and continual change. We hope that we won't be doing this alone and that our customers will help us with their own suggestions. However, for today, we do have many immediate actions!
Energy Usage
We use a lot of electricity and oil! Too much!
We will be looking constantly for ways to reduce this. Some things require cash investment, others simply require our considerate efforts. Some easy examples are:
- Changing approximately 300 light bulbs to energy savers, potentially saving over 10,000Kwh per year. The cost will be close to £1000, but the savings will quickly pay that back.
- Introducing kettles which measure precisely and only boil the water you want to use, when you want to use it.
- Turning down the heating in rooms after guests check out
Water Usage
We are seeking to reduce our water usage by 20-30 cubic metres per month.Two prime examples that will help us to achieve our goal are:
- Installing economical showerheads that reduce water usage by up to 7 litres per minute.
- Installing tap convertors that reduce hand-basin usage by up to 25%.
Harmful Chemicals
Hotels and restaurants use enormous quantities of cleaning materials. Of course, you would not wish us to be any less hygienic, but could we do it in different ways?
Thankfully, the answer is "yes"!
Almost every cleaning product in use today now has a perfectly viable alternative that will not harm our environment. Even better news is that these alternatives are now affordable!
We are currently testing various products, but you can be sure that in future, Home Farm will clean your room just the same, but not at the expense of dirtying our planet with toxic chemicals.
Waste Disposal
We will naturally be taking steps to ensure that whatever can be recycled is recycled, but we have also identified an enormous and totally unnecessary impact that we all have on our environment - the dreaded plastic bag!
Hotels use huge quantities of these things in all sizes from the waste paper bin in your room through to full-size refuse sacks. Every one of these conventional bags will take 400-1,000 years to degrade in landfill sites.
If King Harold's troops had taken a packed lunch to the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and chosen to wrap it in a supermarket carrier bag, that bag could still be lying in the Sussex countryside today! A simple switch to alternative and cost-effective biodegradable bags will reduce that decay period to just 18 months. Isn't that a staggering comparison?!
How Will We Do This?
We cannot do this alone!
Listening to You!
We would ask that our customers feel free to tell us what they think! We are beginners at this and we do not know all of the answers! If you come to stay at Home Farm and you notice things that we could do better for the environment, we want to know! We cannot leave it to someone else to do this; we MUST NOT leave it to governments! Only by the small steps that we ALL take can we really make a BIG difference.
Working With Others
Fortunately, we have been lucky enough to discover a company who have a burning passion for bringing about the changes that we so desperately need. This company will be the cornerstone of our efforts to be "responsibly green".
We have been seriously impressed with this company's approach, which goes way beyond the simple supply of products and is positively evangelistic in its efforts to change our habits to ones more in harmony with our planet - one step at a time! Indeed,so impressed have we been that we, ourselves, will also be promoting their eco-friendly solutions as an Independent Distributor.
Who is this company?
It's called Wikaniko (pronounced We-Can-Eco). We think they are pretty neat guys! If you would like to know more about the company, their products and their fantastic tips for building a better planet, just click on the banner below to visit our distributor site. It could change the way you think..... It COULD change your life!
