greener guest How to be a

Self-catering

It’s all too easy to forget about what food you’re going to need for a self-catering break until the last moment, at which point you make an emergency dash to the nearest supermarket, buy everything in bulk, and then end up throwing the surplus food and associated packaging in the bin at the end of the week. Far better to plan ahead and buy fresh, seasonal food, or order it from a local supplier who can deliver it to you before you reach your accommodation.

Increasingly, farm shops are providing local delivery services – there’s a handy guide to over 8,800 farm shops across the UK at bigbarn.co.uk, including places such as the Loch Arthur Farm Shop in Dumfries and Galloway, which prides itself on its quality artisan food.

Online marketplaces such as magaroo. com can help you find local independent businesses, while local veg box schemes provide a new revenue stream for independent growers and producers, and reduce the need for single-use plastics.

There are an increasing number who enable you to order on a one-off basis, so if you don’t ordinarily have an order for your home, you can still order a box for your self-catering break. Schemes that offer one-off use and deliver nationwide include Eversfield Organic, Boxxfresh, Riverford Organic Farmers, Abel & Cole, Pikt and The Veg Box Company, but there may well be local schemes, such as localfooddirect.co.uk, which delivers fresh, local and ethically sourced food across Somerset, shropshiresown.co.uk, which delivers throughout Shropshire, and food4myholiday.com, a family-run service specifically for self-catering guests in Cornwall and West Devon.

Camping

When you’re camping, it all boils down to respecting nature. Use compostable or recyclable cooking and eating equipment, and use environmentally friendly washing products. For your water, use a large container that can be refilled on site, rather than buying lots of plastic bottles. If you’re taking extra supplies of toilet roll, check whether the campsite requires it to be biodegradable, and buy from ethical suppliers, such as uk.whogivesacrap.org. If the campsite allows open fires, use designated fire pits if available (or take your own), and avoid disposable barbecues. Lastly, sort your rubbish and put it in relevant recycling bins on site before you leave. If you have camping gear that you no longer need, rather than sending it to landfill, consider sending it to organisations such as Gift Your Gear and the Continuum Project, or share it on Freecycle.

Hotels

Once you’ve kicked off your shoes and flopped on the bed, turn to hotel directory or information pack to understand how you can support the hotel’s eco initiatives, for example, by preventing your towels from being washed every day or making sure you sort your rubbish in tune with the hotel’s recycling scheme. Also, look out for any tips on how you can support the local economy, such as where you can eat locally. Turn off the air-conditioning unit/heating or adjust it to a sensible temperature: personal preferences vary, but generally somewhere between 21 and 23ºC (70–74ºF) is comfortable for most.

On leaving the room, turn off the air-con, heating or other electric devices that are on standby if the hotel hasn’t given you a key card that does this automatically, and on check out, give your hotel feedback on how eco-friendly you think it is; if you think it could do more, encourage the hotel to go greener in the future.

Bothies

The Bothy Code requests that you leave the bothy as you would hope to find it – clean and tidy with dry kindling for the next visitors (who may arrive in foul weather and need the warmth of a fire as soon as possible). Make sure that watercourses are not polluted and that you don’t cut firewood from living trees. Adhere to the estate’s restrictions on the use of the bothy, for example during stag stalking or at lambing time, and respect the restriction on numbers – groups of six or more should not use bothies to ensure there’s room for any walker relying on the shelter provided by the bothy.