At Christian Conference Trust we take our environmental and social responsibilities seriously. We are blessed with hundreds of acres of land, dozens of buildings and serve hundreds of thousands of meals each year. We want to be good stewards of the assets and resources we have been entrusted with and have put in place a number of projects and partnerships to help care for the environment as we actively reduce our carbon footprint.
Here are some of the many eco-friendly initiatives we already have in place –
Food with a conscience
Wherever possible, our food and beverages are sourced from fair trade, rainforest secured and child labour free suppliers. We work in partnership with Paddy & Scott, our coffee supplier, to support the children of the farmers in coffee-growing countries of the world. Every bag of Lunch Box Coffee we buy provides a school meal for children in coffee growing regions, so that they can focus on studying and not where their next meal is coming from. Read more about our partnership here.
We are committed to sourcing as much locally produced food as possible, buying in-season produce, reducing the amount of food miles, helping to lower carbon emissions and supporting local farms and businesses. At our centres, we have even created our own gardens so that we can grow and pick fresh herbs every day for our guests to enjoy.
Thinking of our future
We are eliminating single use plastics throughout our centres. Bathroom amenities come in recycled plastic containers, your coffee will be poured in a proper reusable mug and we encourage our guests to turn down the radiators and heaters in your rooms and turn off lights when they are not in use, to save energy.
We’ve replaced 2,000 lightbulbs with eco-friendly alternatives as well as switching to 100% renewable electricity. We encourage our staff to cycle to work by providing bike racks, and enable our guests to arrive in environmentally cleaner vehicles by providing electric charging points.
We have installed several hundred solar panels and two new air-source heat-pumps to increase our renewable energy use and installed picnic benches made from recycled plastic bottle tops.
Supporting our local wildlife
Our centres are set in acres of mature grounds, which include lakes, streams, woodland, countryside and farmland. It is our responsibility to protect these natural environments and to make them accessible to you, for your enjoyment.
To encourage nature conservation at our centres, we have created wildlife spaces including wild play areas, nest and bug boxes, new wetland, non-mowed areas and compost heaps for grass cuttings and uncooked waste fruit and vegetables and other garden waste.
We are developing new nesting and roosting sites for threatened and declining birds and animals, which help to increase our biodiversity and encourage younger visitors to explore and enquire. Over the last year, we've added to this by planting 400 trees and 300m of hedgerow.
Our beehives
In 2022 The Hayes installed 2 beehives with 3 colonies which have grown to over 100,000 bees! Each year we sell their tasty honey in our gift shop. In 2024 High Leigh set up 2 beehives which are both thriving.
These friendly pollinators not only provide delicious honey for our guests, but they also help to bring diversity to the wildlife at our centres.
