Environmental sustainability is essential in all our lifestyle decisions, especially when living this close to the sea. Newquay boasts some of the best beaches in the country, and we are committed to preserving and enhancing them whenever possible. In this article, we will share what we are doing to help protect the environment and maintain the natural beauty of our beaches.
Plastic free
Many hotels and holiday Let’s provide a toiletry pack containing tiny plastic bottles of shampoo, conditioner, shower gel and bars of soap wrapped in plastic. A large hotel with 200 rooms can use 300,000 pieces of single-use plastic monthly. [Source]. We don’t want to contribute to that problem. We don’t think our guests want to either. So no single-serving toiletries. Our soap dispensers get refilled from larger containers. We’re working with our cleaning company to avoid single-use plastics. As we have a laser cutter, after spotting plastic bags being used to store dishwasher and laundry tablets, we were able to design and make this wooden box for them instead.
If you want to do your part, shops such as The Sprout and The Good Lyfe offer plastic-free local produce, and it’s a great way to help the environment whilst supporting local businesses.
Reducing Consumption
As a former Electrical Engineer specializing in LED lighting, I may get carried away discussing its benefits. While filament bulbs were once the norm, compact fluorescent bulbs were a lacklustre replacement. Today, LED bulbs reign supreme with equal light output at only 1/10th of the power usage and a lifespan of 20 times longer. LED bulbs also offer excellent colour rendering and spectrum analysis. At our apartment, we prioritize efficient and functional lighting without sacrificing comfort. We inspect all our electrical appliances regularly to ensure proper and safe operation and turn them off when the apartment is unoccupied to save energy.
Environmental Awareness, Heating
Heating presents a challenge in terms of energy management. We have installed modern heaters featuring advanced control systems with energy-saving functions that detect when doors or windows are open and turn them off accordingly. Bathroom towel heaters operate on demand, with a timer to ensure they only come on when needed. These electric heaters boast a 100% energy conversion rate, significantly higher than gas-condensing boilers that typically operate at 85% efficiency. We continuously explore new ways to improve, including the feasibility of heat pumps, improved extraction control, and enhanced insulation for maximum energy efficiency.
We have also put several things in place to reduce water waste. Our taps are fitted with aerators, reducing the amount required for most uses without compromising functionality. We have dual flush toilets. We have a full-size dishwasher and have provided enough tableware to fill it, so you’re not running the dishwasher several times a day because you don’t have any mugs left. With two showers, the whole family can quickly wash off seawater without using the large amounts of water taken up by a bath. Because we regularly stay here, we can stay on top of maintenance and replace any leaking seals etc., as the issue arises.
Renewable Energy
All our energy comes from renewable sources. We don’t use gas. Our power comes from electricity on a 100% renewable tariff. That doesn’t mean that we are “off the grid”, our electricity still comes from the National Grid, and our supplier uses the money from renewable tariffs like ours to purchase certificates for electricity from renewable sources. Therefore we’re not paying the huge coal-fired power plant to provide electricity. Our money is more likely to end up in the hands of a farmer who has turned one of his fields over to solar panels and sheep or a wind turbine or two.
Body Boards
It’s too easy to buy a bodyboard for £10 only to throw it in the bin a few days later. Or worse, leave it on the beach. Ocean Recovery Project kindly let us use this video which shows 216 bodyboards that they collected in 26 days on a single beach in Devon. I’d love to tell you that this was an isolated incident, but BeachCare collected 600 bodyboards from 3 Cornish beaches in 1 month, which gives an idea of the scale of the problem.
Sustainable Bodyboards
You don’t need to buy a bodyboard for the week or so you are here. We spoke to the guys at Karma Surfboards and got a couple of old-school Dick Pearce plywood bodyboards. These surfboards cost about £80 each, so please don’t leave them on the beach. They should easily last 50 years, so they are well worth the money. The performance is also much better than foam boards. They are handmade in Newquay, and when they finally die, they will compost.
If we have 20 bookings a year and each family of 4 buys 2. body boards, that’s potentially 40 body boards a year that isn’t getting shipped around the world, used for a week and then sent to a landfill site. Over the 50-year life of our boards, a lot of polystyrene will be saved.
Litter Pickers
Going litter-picking might sound more like a court order than a fun holiday activity, but hear us out. Your first holiday in Newquay is all about having fun. However, the more times you visit, the more you feel part of the community. You don’t see yourself as a tourist as your heart lives in Newquay. It’s just unfortunate that your body currently resides in Slough! You want to give something back.
Maybe you’re walking along the beach and see a fishing hook and think, “That’s a bit dangerous. I’ll shift it”. Or the plastic from a 6. pack and remember Peanut, the turtle, or mistake a packet of crisps for a fish and wonder what chance a bird would have. Maybe you enjoy walking up and down our beautiful beaches in the sun and seeing what you can find. Whatever it is, we provide litter pickers, so if you want to join a beach clean or even clean up a little by yourself, you can. Warning! Don’t touch anything that looks like it might go off!
The Future/Education
In 2020 I found I had some free time, as many of us did!
Luckily, the Open University offers a variety of free courses from Marine Mammals to Astronomy. I chose Energy in Buildings. This course has given me some great ideas, such as exploring heat recovery extractors, which allow you to recover hot air rather than simply heating the apartment.
If you have any ideas or suggestions, we would love to hear them. Perhaps you have found some inspiration in this message that you can take home. Even if you are a competitor reading this for inspiration, that’s okay – we’re happy to share our ideas. We would love to start a campaign to encourage more holiday lets to provide belly boards and reduce the use of polystyrene on our beaches.
It’s difficult to predict the future, so here’s a picture of Mr Pringle with our belly boards and the box containing beach toys and wet suits left by previous guests for our future guests to enjoy.
