So I am currently staying at the Ty Mawr Holiday Park resort in Wales. It is one of Parkdean’s sites and this isn’t a specific dig at them, in fact I am writing this while staying here and having a lovely family break but during my stay it got me thinking.
There are plenty of bin’s to chuck waste into but they are all general waste and no recycling. I am not sure what the capacity of this site is, on the field I am on there are 146 pitches and another field which holds even more. So maybe 300+ pitches and easily over 1000 campers plus caravan holidaymakers so a lot of waste is produced but no recycling.
Yes, I could personally try and find a local place to take my recycling waste to, but if it was easier more would do it. I’ve seen a lot of people drinking a fair few beer cans and bottles of Gin etc, no complaints here they are on holiday Afterall but all them cans and bottles could easily be recycled. Yes it would add an additional costs to the business, but we only have one planet and all the recycling which is easy should be done.
There are over 8,000 camp sites in the UK and the Park Deans and the Havens are some of the biggest sites so if even if these sites introduced recycling it would make a massive difference. One of my favourite sites, Manor Farm near Beverly a small family run campsite offers recycling, in fact they insist on it.
Also, as we are nearing the end of our camping trip there will be some left over food, we don’t take food to the campsite or home. We try and buy local but even if we have to use a supermarket, I don’t want to use extra fuel carrying food when I can purchase it around the corner, plus there is usually not a lot of room left in the car, but when we are leaving we usually give the food away to other campers. We rarely have much left, the wife Is good at buying the right amount.
But can campsites do more here, can they collect this food and deliver it to local food bank and help the local community. Yes again this would require a bit more effort from both campers and camp site owners but just think of the good it could do.
These are just two things we think could make a meaningful difference and wouldn’t require much effort from campsite owners and holidaymakers.
Obviously going on a camping holiday is a much more environmentally friendly holiday than flying to hotel somewhere and staying, but it doesn’t mean more cant be done.
What small changes do you think campsite owners could make to be even greener.
