Over the last few years we have been working hard to reduce our environmental impact and are committed to making a day out at The Milky Way an environmentally friendly experience! Many of the improvements we have made have been as a result of an audit carried out by our specialist Environmental Consultants. Below are some examples of the work that we have done to reduce our carbon footprint and to improve our natural environment.
We’ve already gone a long way to reducing our energy consumption having –
For the last two years we've been working closely with our staff to come up with a manageable way to recycle our waste. We started by purchasing a bailer to enable us to process all of our cardboard and plastic for recycling and we installed recycle bins around the site. We estimate that we currently recycle approximately ½ tonne of cardboard and plastic every month. To cut down on paperwork in the office we now receive many of our monthly bills by email and any paperwork to be disposed of is shredded and sent to the recycling centre. We are currently working on increasing the proportion of deliveries, gifts, food and drinks that come in recyclable packaging.
All of our water comes from a natural lake located deep beneath The Milky Way land. We access this water using a bore hole before treating it with UV light to ensure that it is safe to drink. We use a natural reed bed system to treat all of our sewage and wastewater, returning it back to the environment clean and safe. In fact, as an added bonus, the ponds that we created for the reed bed system now provide another fantastic natural habitat for our wildlife.
We've already planted approximately 1,000 indigenous trees (species that are naturally found in this area) and 500 conifers around the Milky Way and in 2005 we planted 3,500 more conifers in our maze. We're working with the South West Forestry Commission on a plan to plant another 50 acres of indigenous trees on the land that surrounds The Milky Way – that’s likely to be around 35,000 more trees!
A few years ago we created another pond with an island in the middle to attract wildlife. We now have fish in the pond (we didn't put them there, so their eggs must have been carried here by birds!) and plenty of wildlife inhabiting the island and surroundings. These include wild Canadian geese, a pair of nesting mallards, two pairs of nesting moorhens and a visiting heron.
