A green business network in Staffordshire has helped a farming couple’s glamping business to boost its eco credentials.
Copper Beech Glamping in South Staffordshire boasts a wildflower meadow, insect hotels and an onsite allotment with composting and recycling facilities.
Owners Tabitha and Steve Cartmail have taken tips from the Staffordshire Business Environment Network (SBEN) to enrich their visitors’ green experience.
They have put up information boards extolling the virtues of being reducing energy use, rainwater collection and using eco-friendly products.
And they encourage their guests to spend their holiday without WiFi, enjoying board games and taking walks in the countryside with its canal and woodlands.
Tabitha has benefited from webinars organised by Staffordshire County Council-funded SBEN, taken part in their carbon literacy project and also linked into their Growth Mapper programme.
The couple’s adjacent 86-acre beef and sheep farm, Knightley House Farm at Woodseaves, has an 11 kilowatt solar energy system.
“We believe in making our business environmentally-friendly,” said Tabitha. “Living sustainably is now not just an option, it is something everybody needs to do.
“We like to demonstrate to our guests how you can go green with many things relatively simply.”
The glamping site, which features a shepherd’s hut, rustic lodge and a wooden cabin, is open all year round on the former site of a kitchen garden.
The couple set it up four years ago to diversify their income stream in response to the ongoing challenges to small farm businesses.
Tabitha has also recently benefited from the peer-to-peer networking programme organised by Staffordshire Chambers of Commerce.
To find out more about the glamping site, click here.
