We are working towards reducing our carbon footprint, and here are some ways we, as a company, are doing this.
We are a 88% vegan company, 10% vegetarian and 2% fish or meat (only when staying in boutique hotels that offer these options). This makes up a huge percentage of carbon emissions that we avoid so easily because our food is still delicious, balanced and even more creative. So, thanks to you all for enjoying our healthy (mostly) plant-based meals.
We stay primarily in one location for the duration of the retreat. We have started staying in a few locations on our long haul, but it is limited to 2 or 3 locations over an 8 – 10 night period. Staying in one place means low carbon emissions because we aren’t burning fuel to get around.
Our activities are low-impact—yoga, hiking, in fact, zero-carbon (except skiing/snowboarding due to the ski lifts, which is also low). These activities are included in the price we measure. The carbon may increase with travel to and from these activities in vehicles.
We currently don’t measure our guests’ travel as part of our carbon output because our guests don’t only come from the UK, so it is hard for us to predict this. We also don’t include travel in the holiday price, which is not part of our calculations. We know that we provide these holidays, so we are looking to include this carbon measurement in the future so we are investigating how we can reduce this.
How can you help?
There are ways that you can help reduce your carbon when coming on our retreats and holidays:
Travel by train, try slow travel across Europe and the UK.
If travelling abroad to Europe or further afield, choose carbon capture schemes, check out Ecologi. Offsetting is not the best thing to do these days, but try carbon capture where you pay for carbon to be absorbed into the environment.
Car share UK – we recommend when guests travel by train to arrive and depart at the same time to taxi share – which helps keep costs and carbon emissions down. Why not consider car share, too? Most guests who drive come alone or with a friend; we have WhatsApp groups that, if you like, you can see who is driving from your area and enjoy getting to know each other on the way to the retreats, and save on your carbon emissions at the same time!
We are by no means saints when it comes to producing carbon, as a travel company we know this is very difficult to reduce. We are working to reduce our carbon output each year by measuring it and then creating plans to reduce it. We are reviewing all our venues and asking them how they can improve their carbon reduction as we don’t own any of our venues but we would like to work with them to help in any way we can. We want to be transparent with this, so please get in touch for more information. As we change things, we will update the website.
