North Cottage Cromer achieves Carbon Charter accreditation
Why does our carbon footprint matter?
Recently there have been plenty of reports of locals here in the UK and notably in Spain protesting about the unwanted impact tourism is having on their lives, whether it’s a shortage of affordable houses (the so-called ‘Airbnb effect’) overly congested rural roads, shortage of scarce water or leaving behind rubbish. It’s happening further afield too. Last Autumn in Japan the once super-affordable rail passes for tourists saw a very sharp price hike because Japanese travellers complained their public transport has become too crowded. We’re all being urged to think more carefully about the choices we make as travellers.
This isn’t just about Climate Change
Climate change is only a small part of the sustainability story, so if you just want to plan your holiday don’t stop reading yet!
When we leave home for a few days or weeks our behaviour necessarily changes to some extent. We travel further and travel differently, using more resources. We eat differently and shop differently. We might buy more stuff, some stuff we don’t need and things we can’t take home. Every action we take has an impact. Visitors to the Maldives are encouraged to leave ‘only footprints’ taking home with them all plastic and toiletries rather than leave them on the isolated islands. It’s a philosophy we can all embrace wherever we travel.
What can we do at North Cottage Cromer?
Providing somewhere to stay for your holiday also increases our carbon footprint. We source and provide lots of items to make your stay comfortable. The choices we make for these things have an impact on the environment and the people who live and work in North Norfolk.
With this in mind we provide lots of information for guests about how they can help minimise the things we need to do and provide and at the same time encourage you to be mindful of the way you travel, handle your rubbish, and respect the environment.
We’ve written about some of the things we’ve done, and what our guests can do to help on the sustainability page of this website here.
Our Carbon Charter Accreditation
In February we were invited to complete an online questionnaire to measure our carbon footprint. It asked us lots of questions about our attitude and our goals. We realised as we completed the form that these were questions that mattered to us, both as hosts, but also as travellers. We saw that we already did some of the things suggested – use less energy, be more careful with waste, purchase sustainably, but there was much more we could do ourselves, and encourage our guests to do too.
At the end of our carbon footprint evaluation – which also involved some online interviews and providing utility bills and data about guest occupancy rates, we were invited to apply for Carbon Charter Accreditation.
Carbon Charter Accreditation isn’t just a fancy badge to stick on your website and forget about. We achieved Bronze level, so there’s a clue right there! Yes, there are higher levels of achievement to strive for. Along with our award we were set some targets, and these are given priorities.
Even though we only received the award a few weeks ago, we’ve already started work on our ‘First Priority Targets’. These include promoting sustainable travel options (bus, train) and how to reach the property from the train station. Some of our recent guests have travelled by train and we’ll encourage them mention that in their reviews.
We’ve also finally managed to get smart meters installed so that we can sign up for a renewable electricity tariff (the house had ancient night and day electricity meters until recently). In July we signed up to an electricity supplier using 100% renewable sources of generation. We’ve also started on one of our second priority targets – monitoring water use. That seems appropriate after a very dry Spring season when all our water butts (4 x 240 litres) ran dry and we rationed water to the plants and let the lawn turn slightly brown.
Please play your part!
Our aim is that by discovering all the little things we can all do every day and how they all add up we’re encouraging you to think about what you can do too. By holidaying in the UK, rather than boarding an aeroplane you’ve already made one step. Another might be to walk to the supermarket rather than drive, or take the train here.
There are some more tips on our sustainability page here.
We’re proud of our Carbon Charter accreditation. But we know it’s just the first stage of a longer journey. Please play your part too!
