Hendra Holiday Park, near Newquay, Cornwall added ‘freecycle’ points to its recycling areas at the start of the 2017 season. Together with posters across the park encouraging guests to ‘freecycle’ their unwanted beach goods and holiday items rather than throw them away the scheme has been a massive success.
Matt Way, general manager said ‘We were concerned at the quantity of reusable items being thrown away; guests buy them to use on their holiday but don’t want to pack and take them home, so we thought we’d try a scheme to get the items re-used. We accommodate over 3,500 guests per night in peak season so that’s a lot of buckets and spades, windbreaks, bodyboards and portable barbecues! Guests leave their unwanted but undamaged and re-usable items and other guests make use of them and then return them to the freecycle points again. It’s also been a good opportunity to engage visitors in our green and sustainable philosophies too and, whilst this is a free facility, we suggest guests re-using any items make a small donation to our annual chosen charity. We were also aware that a lot of unrecyclable beach items are being discarded on local beaches, so we hope other accommodation providers will follow our lead, provide a similar facility and encourage their visitors to bring their items back to their accommodation to be ‘freecycled’ rather than thrown away.’
Hendra’s investment into sustainable business practises has gained them many awards including the Sustainable Tourism Business gold at the Visit Cornwall Tourism Awards for 2017 as well as Holiday Park of the Year for Cornwall and for South West England. In the same year Hendra gained gold for their 5 Star Enjoy England quality grading and gold for their 5 Pennant AA quality rating. Hendra publishes info on their sustainable practises on their website www.hendra-holidays.com.
