Putting sustainability at the top of our agenda: Home Farm adopts the UN's Global Goals
Have you heard about the UN’s Global Goals?
… to be honest, we only discovered them late last year but they’ve been on our minds ever since. So much so, that we’re re-modelling our entire business around them.
The 17 Global Goals (outlined in the image below), were set up in 2015 by the World Leaders of the United Nations General Assembly and are intended to create a better world by 2030 by ending poverty, fighting inequality and addressing the urgency of climate change. Pretty cool huh!
In closer focus, these are what the 17 goals are designed to achieve:
Goal 1 - No Poverty - End poverty in all its forms everywhere
Goal 2 - Zero Hunger - End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture
Goal 3 - Good Health & Wellbeing - Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages
Goal 4 - Quality Education - Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education & promote lifelong learning opportunities for all
Goal 5 - Gender Equality - Achieve gender equality and empower women and girls
Goal 6 - Clean Water and Sanitation - Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all
Goal 7 - Affordable & Clean Energy - Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all
Goal 8 - Decent Work & Economic Growth - Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all
Goal 9 - Industry, Innovation & Infrastructure Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation
Goal 10 - Reduced Inequalities - Reduce inequality within and among countries
Goal 11 - Sustainable Cities and Communities - Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable
Goal 12 - Responsible Consumption & Production - Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns
Goal 13 - Climate Action - Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts
Goal 14 - Life Below Water - Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development
Goal 15 - Life on Land - Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss.
Goal 16 - Peace, Justice & Strong Institutions - Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels
Goal 17 - Partnerships - Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize a partnership for sustainable development
Thinking about how we can do better at Home Farm…
Some of the goals may seem broad and abstract, but the idea is that a conglomerate in Singapore, a school in California, a start-up in Estonia or a glamping meadow in Elstree (!) could find relevance within the goals, and use them as a guide to operating in a more sustainable way.
While Home Farm Glamping may fare pretty well compared with other businesses, we believe we can challenge ourselves to do better. The goals have encouraged us to address some of the areas of the business where we feel we could prioritise sustainability and educate our guests more effectively. Using some of the goals as inspiration, we have shortlisted 6 areas where we feel we could improve our sustainability credentials. These are:
Find an alternative to the generator we need to use to power the showers
Manage the food waste left by guests onsite
Create more educational content about the nature and wildlife on the Aldenham Estate grounds
Host more eco-focused events for the local community
Reducing our water waste on site
Find a greener alternatives to our laundry process (in terms of the washing process and ensuring the sheets are manufactured sustainably)
Putting our cards on the table
Given that we often talk about sustainability and our love for the natural world, I think it’s important to share why we haven’t addressed some of these issues until now.
As a small twelve tent glamping site that can only operate between April to October, there is a limit to how much revenue, and therefore profit, we can generate each year. Originally being a farm, our facilities (like the Barn) and lack of facilities (like the bathrooms) have had to be retrospectively fitted to create a hospitality venue. We had to install bathrooms with a power-operated water pump to heat the showers as there is not enough mains power fed to the site. If we wanted to replace the generator with solar panels on our barn roof, which is an idea I’ve been exploring this year, we’ve discovered that we would have to replace the barn roof altogether as we have asbestos from when the barn used to house cattle. This development alone would set us back in the region of £300,000 - which is a huge investment when you crunch the numbers.
What our customers think
Before we embarked on our ambitious Global Goals journey, which we plan to extend to the wider Aldenham Estate, we wanted to understand how important sustainability is to our glampers and what matters the most to them whilst staying with us.
Our survey revealed some key findings:
That 100% of those surveyed agree that sustainability credentials influence their decision when choosing a glamping stay in the UK - This one I found interesting as I was under the impression that for a lot of our guests choosing to go glamping, as opposed to a mini-break abroad, may already be their sustainable choice. It’s also interesting to see that at a time of economic uncertainty people are prepared to make a sustainable choice over a financial one.
That our guests are more likely to throw away (or compost) food at the end of their stay rather than take it home with them - We do see a lot of food go into our composting system at Home Farm which the team desperately try to avoid from happening. We’re exploring some ways to help prevent this, but also want to find ways to encourage guests to bring food from their fridges, rather than buy new, and take home un-used food.
All guests surveyed want to hear about The Global Goals and what we are doing towards them during their stay - Being a leisure business, we are very aware that the majority of our guests want to get away from the stresses and pressures of home, which may include climate doom and gloom. We want to ensure there is a fine balance of education and accessibility, without the feeling of being lectured.
90% of our guests want to hear about our sustainability journey on our social media and comms channels - I was a little surprised (but relieved) by this result, as I know I feel a little bit of fatigue hearing from all the brands I subscribe to discussing their green initiatives, and wondering whether half of them are green washing. It’s great to know we have captured some interest and our guests want to see how the Global Goals shapes the direction of Home Farm
The majority of our guests want us to make moving away from the generator the biggest priority out of our 6 goals onsite - With this knowledge, we can start to work backwards: work out how we will raise the money to do this and work out what the short term solutions are.
It was really encouraging to hear that our guests, new and old, care about our sustainability journey and would like to hear how we get on. Over the coming months we’ll be sharing our trials and tribulations with you: what worked and didn’t work; the stumbling blocks and the victories; so that you feel a little less overwhelmed when tackling your carbon footprint on a personal level. Hopefully we can even inspire a few people to introduce the Global Goals to their businesses, schools and communities!
We’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback in the comments below, and, if you work in the sustainability sector or are part of a business that may be interested in the Global Goals, we'd love to hear from you!
