Sustainability 27 March 2023

We Have Been Awarded The Green Tourism Gold Award!

Some thoughts from The Helix Eco Team on our recent Gold Green Tourism Award, written by Sandra Baxter, Visitor Services Advisor.

The Helix Park is founded in the values of sustainability, biodiversity and community.  Achieving the Green Tourism Gold Award is, for us, an amazing achievement and gives our staff, communities, volunteers and customers the recognition for our attempts to be mindful of these values in everything we do. 

Our team, like people all over the world, are becoming ever more concerned about green issues and their environmental impact on a personal level. We are proud to be working in an environment where we can support green initiatives throughout the business and look forward to continuing our green journey.

The pandemic lockdowns brought to the forefront the importance of community, mental health and personal wellbeing. As we came back to work, our management team created a space where we could share the hobbies and strategies that we used to keep ourselves well, encouraging us to help each other and share our interests. The last few years have also highlighted the park’s important role for the local community in providing a green space where people could meet and exercise.   

Highlights of our key category scores from Green Tourism include 100% in health and wellbeing, and a 90% score for community. Other initiatives included undertaking projects to reuse and repurpose wood offcuts from the park that would normally have been discarded. Within the café, single use items have been reduced significantly and reusable options are championed. These recycling initiatives contributed to an 82% score from Green Tourism under the waste category.

We are very proud of our work so far and of the wider teams enthusiasm to embrace change. We look forward to continuing our journey and improving on our Green Tourism score.

I would like to say thank you to all my colleagues, volunteers, visitors and local communities, we couldn’t have achieved Gold without you!

Sandra