Hop Pickers has been awarded the Green Mark Accreditation

At Hop Pickers Rural Retreats our vision is to continually improve our carbon footprint and become as sustainable as possible, we have worked hard over the last year and following on from the COVID lockdown to achieve this.

As a part of our recent improvements all lighting was changed to LED. During lockdown our owner, David, who lives on site carefully monitored each electrical appliance to accurately record the usage in each individual property. From these results we now have a strict electricity policy, meaning each property is ‘shutdown’ after each guest to save wasted electricity on fridges and appliances that are not in use. We have used reclaimed wood for building projects such as the refurbishment of the hot tub decking at the Hideaway and the new decking around the new Barn hot tub with future planning on refurbishing the cabin decking and tennis hut floor where only locally sourced reclaimed wood will be used.

We have spent time developing our woodland walk with tree coppicing and management, which will encourage local wildlife and provide space for new growth. We have installed multiple bird and bat boxes on site. Our lawns are now mown only with walking pathways and the rest is left to nature with wildflower planting in the spring. Over the last 2 summers of leaving the grass to grow we have noticed a significant increase in insects and small mammals including rabbits, moles, shrew, butterflies, frogs, and bees.  Our newly installed wildlife cameras help monitor the woodland wildlife remotely which has vastly improved the guests experience of wildlife watching from the comfort of the cowshed. Our ponds are in the process of being restored and the level has been raised so that in the summer we can use this additional water on our gardens. The plan is to install a solar powered pump to ease the process of fetching the water from the pond. This is likely to reduce our garden water consumption by 50%.

Our guests are also encouraged to get involved in our sustainable efforts. We encourage guests to be mindful of lights and heating not being left on when they go out for the day. We also have thorough information on waste management and encourage our guests to recycle and compost correctly. Our shampoo, body wash and conditioner are supplied in the individual bottles however our supplier, Bramley, use all recyclable packaging, 100% natural ingredients and are cruelty-free and vegan-friendly. Our welcome hamper is locally sourced within 5 miles of the farm.

Behind the scenes we use smol eco-friendly cleaning products which massively reduces plastic consumption by having dissolvable tablets in reusable containers for our cleaning sprays, all their packaging in recyclable or compostable too. Our bed linen is washed by a local company who use lower temperatures and fabric carry bags instead of plastic wrap.  All cardboard and glass bottles are recycled locally. Our dishwasher tablets and laundry capsules are also by Smol.

We still plan to improve further and are looking at installing an electric car charger for the use of guests, and solar panels to significantly reduce our electric consumption.