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For 2025, I was eager for the business to enhance its efforts for the planet, collaborate more closely with local communities, and provide a better experience for those seeking a holiday with minimal impact.
Previously, we participated in various accreditations. However, it felt like we were growing complacent, earning gold awards due to the estate and its remarkable grounds and continuing with the status quo. Instead, we should evaluate the business as a whole and identify areas for improvement right across the board.
For these reasons, we have partnered with Green Tourism and after an evaluation at the end of 2024 we were awarded a Bronze Award. A great result when you see how all-encompassing the criteria are!
How were we assessed?
Achieving a Green Tourism award means that our sustainability practices have been assessed and verified by a credible partner. It shows that we have an ongoing commitment:
to sustainability standards and practices
to work responsibly, ethically, and sustainably
to contribute to our community
to reduce our impact on the environment, and
to be accessible and inclusive to all visitors and staff.
Green Tourism has assessed our business against 15 sustainability criteria grouped under the three pillars of People, Places and Planet. These consider the social, economic, and environmental actions we undertake, providing a holistic assessment of our sustainability performance.
Our highlights
Green Tourism also helped us to highlight our areas of sustainability strengths:
Anyone who has visited Trewan knows how lucky we are with our natural surroundings, this plus our commitment to our native woodlands and ensuring any developments are in keeping with our surroundings has led to a very unique feeling here and something that can only be achieved over a long period of time.
Last year alone we planted over 100 new trees to replace any that naturally came down or that we felled for risk management.
We also became members of Kernow Conservation, and made a significant donation to their beaver reintroduction program. We are looking forward to working with them to provide the location for meetings and nature walks.
Our commitment to reusing resources onsite was highly commended. From collecting leaves through the Autumn to break down and be used in our flower beds, chipping felled wood to use underfoot in our playpark and producing charcoal from larger felled wood for sale in the Camp shop.Â
What our Bronze award means?
Green Tourism provides an overall grading of Gold, Silver, or Bronze depending on the overall score achieved across the comprehensive criteria. Typically, Bronze is where businesses like ours start off, those who are in the early stages of their green journey but have shown great commitment to making their business
work more sustainably and are currently implementing a range of measures related to the 15 goals across all three pillars of People, Places, and Planet.
How we build towards Gold
In our objectives regarding people, we will explore ways to improve communication about our environmental efforts and actions. Additionally, we will focus on enhancing the mental well-being of our staff and guests. Stay tuned for upcoming plans for various sessions this summer; mindfulness and the atmosphere at Trewan could be a perfect match!
As part of our places goals, I'm planning to provide more guidance on how to appreciate our more immediate surroundings and utilize public transport options. There are excellent local services available, and it would be wonderful to highlight them. The Roundhouse is scheduled for a refurbishment, and I intend to dedicate one wall to this type of local information.
Our planet goals require meticulous record-keeping on my part. Since we draw our own water, we have generally been lenient about the amount guests use. While I won't ask guests to take shorter showers, maintaining better records of our consumption could help us find ways to reduce water usage, particularly in high-demand areas like the swimming pool and flower beds. Likewise, our solar panel installation helps reduce our bills. However, gaining a more detailed understanding of our electricity usage could further highlight areas for improvement.
What can you do?
Achieving our goals and minimizing our impact is unattainable without the help of our campers. While actions like recycling and cutting down on electricity use seem obvious, I would greatly value your input on improvements or new initiatives you'd like to see. Alternatively, if this is something you'd prefer not to think about during your holiday, let me know. An open conversation would be brilliant, so feel free to stop me or message/email me (Phil) anytime if you'd like to chat about it.
Thanks for taking the time to read this, the comments section is very much open!
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