Green Policy
Here at Attadale we are committed to being an environmentally responsible, community aware business. We are a small enterprise, but we firmly believe it is important for us to constantly improve our efforts towards sustainability and understand that our impact is relevant. We are always looking for the next steps and assessing our practices and process to ensure we support visitors to engage in responsible tourism.
Read our Green Story here
Energy and Water
Energy
We have converted the lights to support LED bulbs, replaced electrical appliances with new more energy efficient models and installed automatic lights in all appropriate places. We are investigating the installation of electric vehicle charging.
Water
We don’t use chlorine treatments: the drinking water is treated instead with UV light and a 2 step filtration system.
We only use and provide environmentally friendly cleaning and hygiene products, to ensure less harmful substances enter the water system.
Greener power tools
we use cordless battery-operated tools for hedge cutting, leaf blowing and strimming to reduce our use of fossil fuels, we use an electricity supplier that provides 60% renewable energy.
Supporting Local Producers
We lease the running of our café to a local family; we promote local producers in public spaces by stocking their leaflets and offering recommendations. Supporting and promoting local producers can help to reduce our carbon footprint and support our communities.
Visitor Impact
Supporting the use of public transport
Visitors are encouraged to travel to Attadale by train, and we offer a free Attadale Gardens visitors guide to anyone arriving by train or means other than motor vehicle. We promote the use of the train line for days out, providing timetables and recommendations in the gatehouse
Supporting our local business community
We provide guests with information on visitor attractions in the area as well as recommending places to eat and drink. This promotes staying in the local area, engaging in slower tourism, and supporting fellow businesses, which by extensions reduces travel miles and supports local communities.
Outdoor activities on our doorstep
Activities to try within Attadale Estate: Visitors can go hillwalking, mountain biking or fishing. Observing the abundance of local wildlife including our red squirrel population can also be very rewarding.
Reduce and Re-use
Waste reduction
We offer and encourage the use of re-usable crockery and cutlery in the DIY café as well as providing a recycling and re-use station for single use items and compostable waste. We refill all cleaning and hygiene products on site to further reduce plastic waste.
We encourage the use of compostable dog waste disposal bags, providing visitors with bags for free and we have created composting sites for this express purpose at various points on site.
In the garden, we use expandable Jiffy pots that are biodegradable and can be planted straight into the ground, re-use plastic pots for raising seedlings and cuttings to be planted out in the garden and the plant pots we use in our plant sale area are recyclable. All this reduces plastic waste.
Attadale has “adopted” the train station where we built and planted up raised beds using wood reclaimed from our greenhouse when it was replaced. We also set up a rainwater collection system to water the plants at the station.
Processing organic by-products – nothing wasted
Leaves are collected (to make leaf mould) as are fern fronds which we then use to mulch around beds. Bark chippings from trees we have taken down are used to make paths around the garden. We have a composting system which produces compost for the gardens using food waste created by our holiday cottage guests and those of us who live on site.
Wildlife and Habitat
Supporting flora and fauna
We grow wildflowers to encourage pollinators and have areas of grass that are left uncut, as well as dead hedges all of which provide natural habitats for wildlife. We also created several ponds and small water ways that support a variety of amphibians & insects. We use wildlife friendly maintenance practices.
We have very successfully re-introduced red squirrels onto the estate as a part of wider conservation project by Trees for Life. The project aims to establish a red squirrel population in the Northwest Highlands by relocating red squirrels from the east coast across 10 sites, hoping to see those populations growing and merging. The squirrels are very happy and thriving.
Protecting habitat
We have reduced our chemical usage for weed control on gravelled areas, we use peat free compost for our propagation and plant sales and biological controls for pests, these are in the form of foliage feed and nematodes. We now use a “no dig” approach in our cut flower beds and supply all our own flowers to our holiday cottages, Attadale events and the Midge Bite DIY café.
Feedback
We really appreciate feedback and suggestions – be this on our efforts to become sustainable and or more generally on your experience as a visitor. Feedback can be given in person during your visit, in the suggestion box located in the Midge Bite DIY café or right here via email - Leave feedback
Thank you for taking the time to read our green policy
We will update our policy at intervals as things develop and improvements are made.