Environmental Policy for Atlantic House Guest House

We moved to The Lizard from Somerset and our busy lives, to find a better less stressful way of life.  As The Lizard Peninsular  is a place of outstanding natural beauty and of Special Scientific Interest, we felt we had to make a conscious decision to live in harmony with the local environment.  With 26 million visitors coming to Cornwall each year, we feel we have a duty of care to conserve energy, water and recycle household waste.

We have adopted a policy of where ever possible to use low energy light bulbs, turn off lights and not leave electrical items on unnecessarily, (not leaving televisions on standby).  Guests are politely asked to do the same.  All our electrical equipment is A rated for low energy use and all radiators have thermostatic valves.

Our water is metered, which helps keep track of usage and we only have showers in the house to reduce wastage. We also tell guest we are more than happy to wash towels on a daily basis, but to help reduce the consumption of water could they help the environment by requesting washing as and when necessary. In the garden we have a 300 gallon tank to collect rain water for all our outdoor use, 2006 was the first summer it has run dry!.

In recent years we have made a conscious effort to recycle as much waste as possible and have 2 compost bins in the garden

We also take very seriously the problem of food miles.  Living at the end of the country can be a problem, but we use where possible local  suppliers, our eggs, bacon, sausages, milk and yoghurts all are bought in the village.  We use suppliers who make regular visits to the village supplying other business keeping our food miles as low as possible.  When we do have to pay a visit to the local supermarket we try to make it just once a week stocking up our freezer.

We are now using more ecologically friendly cleaning and recycled products where possible, without compromising our guests comfort and our high standards.

We have made sure our home is well insulated, the attic has 12 -15 inches thick of insulation, the external walls of the attic have foil, air pocketed heat retentive wrap fixed to them.  All our windows are now double glazed.

Our future aims are to seek a suitable wind turbine to generate electricity.  It is hoped the environmental energy cost to manufacture the turbine will be offset by the long term wind only generation of power and the non use of oil and electricity from the national grid.  We are also hoping to install solar pipe water heaters to heat our large hot water tank.

Most of our guests have researched The Lizard Peninsular and are aware of it’s uniqueness, both in flora and fauna and sea and bird life and we actively encourage everyone not only to visit local attractions but to use local shops, restaurants and cafes. 

We are very aware of the impact of climate change world wide and feel that although our contribution is very localised, we hope that the cumulative effect will be global.