Many people come up to me and ask how our Green Policies are developing (well Old Macdonald does and being as he is the boss I had better let you all know to keep him happy!) If you look back at our archives from January you will read all about our aims, and this website has a whole section telling you what we want to achieve, but what Old Macdonald and you need to know is what exactly have we done so far?
First of all, everyone visiting the farm is encouraged to use the recycling bins placed all around and we try and make sure that everything we sell is in packages that can be recycled. We have asked all our suppliers to cut back on plastic packaging, and we use paper bags that you can use again and again, and when you have worn them out you can recycle them too! So recycling is going well here at Old Macdonald’s Farm and we hope all of you, our friends, take these good habits home.
Then there are our competitions, and no one can miss the giant Tractorpult designed by 4 year old Charlotte as our Autumn Term competition winner and built entirely from scrap, that fired pumpkins down the farm at Halloween. Once seen, never forgotten. We can justifiably claim this is the only one in the world because there is no one else daft enough to build one of these! In our archives from November last year you can see more on this.
Then there are the small things you may not notice. When you see our staff driving around the farm you will notice that they are on electric driven carts so they do not need petrol and are environmentally safe. Our fun rides have electric drives so they take far less power than the normal leisure equipment….in fact less than one third! So that gives a great saving in power use, and of course helps Old Macdonald save a few pennies too! Also, we build walkways and homes for our goats and sheep from materials salvaged by the Essex Material Exchange Group, as shown on our goat walkway.
Also, helping the environment is much more than just this. We try and recruit local staff too to cut back on travel and help the local economy and our staff car share when they come in. We buy much of our produce locally and use Fairtrade supplies. Sainsbury supply nearly out of date fruit and veg to feed our ever hungry livestock so they do not have to send this to landfill and the smug look on our pig demonstrates the popularity of this policy.
We have improved accessibility for those with special needs and our new bridges are designed to be accessible too. Finally we are running local community days and initiatives, with fund raising for the local Animal Sanctuary and our Local Heroes Day as well.
The words used to describe this are “sustainable” activities, and this means running things that do not use up and waste the world’s resources. We are going to put together displays that show you how the world’s food supplies are being stretched and also how water is becoming more and more scarce in many areas causing famine and hardship.
So that gives you a flavour of what we are doing and I hope that everyone reading this will come up with their own ideas for our farm to help the environment. We will give free tickets for all ideas and for any that we can build and use here we will give a free annual pass. If anyone comes up with an idea as wacky and wonderful as the Tractorpult, I really do not know how we can reward that!
