Engaging Stakeholders on A Journey to Green Accreditation
| Swinton Estate is a privately owned estate in the Yorkshire Dales owned by the Cunliffe-Lister family, and boasts 20,000 acres of landscapes including a range of businesses spanning from hospitality to the rural estates side of the business, working on properties, land management and sustainability. In November 2023, Swinton Estate achieved Green Level Accreditation through successfully engaging stakeholders on their sustainability journey.
Key Highlights
How did they do it? Sustainability is communicated across the whole business, engaging stakeholders, staff and visitors. Over the past year Swinton Estate has focused on identifying key stakeholders, as well as implementing and building upon communication to engage the different stakeholders. Internal Stakeholders Swinton Estate identified staff as one of the most important stakeholders in order to embed sustainability across the Estate. Therefore, Swinton Estate has carried out several fun initiatives to incorporate sustainability into staffs’ everyday as well as raise money for charity. For example, the Estate organised a month-long clothes swap which also included books and general bric-a-brac to discourage a throw away culture and encourage socialising between staff. A Green Jumper Day was also coordinated on the International Day of Climate Action to raise awareness of resource use across the hotel and offices. Donations from the day were given to the Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust who do extraordinary work on conserving and restoring native habitats and wildlife in the Yorkshire Dales, where Swinton Estate is situated. Sustainability is also integrated into the organisation through technical and operational changes such as utilising O-zone laundry which reduces energy, water and chemical consumption by 35%, and laundry is transported by electric vehicles. Forestry staff had concerns regarding waste timber, thus in 2006, a biomass boiler was installed which has now expanded to three. Swinton Estate has also constructed new offices to be opened in March 2024 with sustainability and resource consumption in mind, including using lime instead of cement which creates 50% less carbon emissions, as well as utilising natural wood fibre which stores 322 kg/m3 of CO2. Materials were derived from the estate where possible, and where they cannot be, are sourced locally. External Stakeholders Swinton Estate recognises that engaging external stakeholders such as suppliers and customers is crucial to embedding sustainability. To bring suppliers along the Estate’s journey, Swinton Estate has undertake a Supplier Survey and now encourages key suppliers to sign a Green Procurement Charter. Some commitments that were agreed by both Swinton and suppliers were to act in accordance with the waste hierarchy and not make unnecessary purchases, to monitor ongoing procurement activity, eliminating or reducing the procurement of products or services that have the most harmful environmental impact and asking suppliers to provide information about the processes and materials used in their manufacturing processes, identifying any processes harmful to the environment and work towards phasing out such practices. Through this work, Swinton Estate hopes to reduce carbon emissions associated with procurement which accounts roughly 80% of its baseline carbon footprint. Although all actions are initiated by the Swinton Estate Sustainability Team, there has been a successful and engaging cascading effect throughout all staff and suppliers helping to make Swinton a leading business in sustainability. Ellie Paddison, the Sustainability Coordinator at Swinton Estate, states ‘In the past year, the staff of Swinton Estate have been so grateful for the opportunity to increase their staff engagement when it comes to sustainability. There have been numerous positive feedback comments from raising money for the Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust to integrating wood chip waste into biomass boilers heating the whole hotel, suggesting repeating more often. This is a great step into integrating sustainability into our core values and in a fun way!’.
Find out more about Swinton Estate’s sustainability journey:
|