A campsite in Cornwall is doing everything it can to become as close to zero-waste as possible.
Prosper House Camping based in Gwithian has lots of features that help it to reduce it’s carbon footprint and waste production.
Ranging from the use of one-hundred percent recycled toilet paper and bio-degradable cleaning products to an ambitious plan to have the campsite toilets flushed by the local stream water.
Ruth Greenaway who owns and runs the campsite explains that the goal of the site is to produce less waste than other campsites and encourage people to forgo some twenty-first century technology and instead embrace nature and their surroundings during their stay.
“Our aim was always to have as minimal environmental impact as possible, so encouraging people to camp without some of the ‘home comforts’ that other sites offer. Our primary goal has been to reduce waste.”
The campsite discourages the use of power and doesn’t offer electrical hook-ups and only provides an amenities area where small devices such as phones can be recharged.
Each camping pitch is provided with a recycling bin and guests are asked to separate food waste so that it can be used for compost.
According to Ruth, the system works well with most guests, but some still fail to make the effort to recycle properly.
“Some of our guests are good at this anyway, but for some the concept of having one bin for rubbish and one for recycling seems to be too much to cope with!”
She also feels that the minimal waste plan that her site adopts creates more work for her than a standard campsite but doesn’t see this as a deterrent.
”The only part of our system that increases the work for us is the waste and the recycling, I’m not above rifling through bin bags to get glass or plastic bottles out of them, when people haven’t separated them out! But that’s because we are a bit fanatic about recycling and reducing waste!”
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