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Being Green
We're committed to minimising our impact on the environment, and being as sustainable in our actions as possible. We are constantly striving to implement new initiatives, and monitor our consumption and output to be as efficient as we can be.
Sustainable Actions
In line with our policy, there are a wide variety of practices undertaken across site, including:
- Water usage across the site is strictly monitored and recorded, to ensure that any anomalies can be immediately investigated and rectified. We have started to do this with electric too.
- All staff departments have specific waste disposal bins, allowing for recycling of the majority of waste to be maximised; from dry-mixed recycling of plastics, cans, cardboard and paper; to ink cartridges, electrical equipment and batteries; even our herbivore poo is taken by a farmer to be used as fertiliser.
- Public recycling is available, with large public recycling facilities located on the car park; a recycling bank in the main café and a recycling bin in the Starbucks café and Darwin centre.
- All of the used cooking oil from our café is recycled, and used to make biofuels.
- Our cafes and shops only sell products that are palm oil free or contains certified sustainable palm oil.
- Our sustainability officer writes a regular newsletter, entitled the ‘Eco Echo’, which looks at various sustainability news and ideas, and is distributed to zoo members, visitors and staff.
Blackpool Zoo Palm Oil Statement of Intent
Here at Blackpool Zoo we understand the serious threat that is posed to biodiversity, indigenous communities and the environment by the mass production of palm oil. We instigated a full review, which started in January 2016, of all our products sold for human consumption to identify palm oil content and its source; in order to move towards sourcing only certified sustainable palm oil (CSPO) in these products by the end of 2016.
We have achieved our goal early and now only sell food from our catering outlets and products in our shops that contains certified sustainable palm oil or is palm oil free although we believe that it is not a practical solution to avoid the use of palm oil altogether. We acknowledge the financial importance of palm oil for millions of people's livelihoods, and recognise that as the highest yielding oil plant, palm oil is better suited to meet the increasing demands for the world's vegetable oil without increasing the amount of land use and thus subsequent destruction of habitat. As such we are supporting the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) who are the primary body for sustainable palm oil standards and endorse the efforts that they take to ensure that sustainable palm oil is the norm.
Whilst we have achieved CSPO in all food products we are aware that as a company we use palm oil in other products such as animal feed and in cleaning products as oleochemicals. As the palm oil in these is harder to trace we are investigating this matter further.
The Green Team
At the zoo we also have a ‘Green Team’, which is made up of staff across different department along with our sustainability officer, to discuss and evaluate the sustainable practices of the zoo, and to push the implementation of new initiatives.
Nature Gardens
We have also developed two sustainable wildlife gardens by the Education department. These was aimed at benefitting native wildlife, using reclaimed materials to create a haven for native species, and also to show people how they can be more sustainable at home. These gardens feature:
- Compost bins, composting food and other suitable waste.
- A log pile, using cut offs from tree pruning and alike to create a mini eco system inside.
- Bird feeders and a pond to encourage native wildlife.
- Hedgehog homes built from reclaimed materials.
- Beds containing bee/butterfly attracting flowers, to try and benefit these very important but threatened animals, and herbs for use in animal enrichment.
- Vegetable planters to exhibit how to grow your own and to create feed some of our small animals.
- ‘Bug-hotels’, made from natural and reclaimed materials, to encourage invertebrates to colonise.
