Environmental Sustainability

The Castle Climbing Centre asked me to write a few words about Mountain Magic’s approach to sustainability. It was good to think it through and get it down on paper. Here it is:

Taking care of our natural environment is fundamental to Mountain Magic. The deeper our connection with nature, the more we realise we are an integral part of it and the better we take care of it.

Mountain Magic connects people with nature and raises environmental awareness. As director of Mountain Magic, I am inspired by The Castle’s sustainability policy and I am delighted to be associated with it.

My home, office and equipment store is a van. I burn 65kg/year of carbon neutral wood and 5kg/year of gas. My lighting is rechargeable and I have had to learn to be really good at conserving water.

The van is approaching 5000 miles/year and I want to reduce this further. In terms of your travel to a course, I encourage you to lift share or take the train, where I will pick you up at the station and drop you off on your way home.

Mountain Magic uses eco-friendly accommodation providers. Glencoe Cottages (Gold Award for Green Tourism) and Inside Out Camping (yurts with wood burners and solar lighting) are two good examples.

We are lucky to have Booths supermarkets in Cumbria. They care about reducing their greenhouse gas footprint and I can buy all our food in the knowledge that it has come no further than the neighbouring county.

I use a second-hand laptop and my Phone Co-op contract includes a Fairphone. Ethical Consumer Magazine says this is the most sustainable combination of network and handset currently available. Check it out.

The combined carbon footprint for my life and the work of Mountain Magic is 4 tonnes/year. That’s 2 tonnes for transport, 1 tonne for vehicle production, 0.6 tonnes for food and 0.4 tonnes for financial services.

4 tonnes/year is 40% of the UK average/person but double the global target. To achieve that, I need to be vehicle free and I hope to get there by 2020. In the meantime, it costs less than £50/year to offset the emissions.

There will always be improvements to make. I feel it’s important to ask myself what I really need and to work towards a sustainable life. It’s been a worthwhile, enjoyable and life enriching journey along the way.

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