Volunteering spotlight: Lian

Meet Lian from our Central Team

Did you know we provide our employees with two annual paid volunteer days? This aligns with our B Corp certification and values, allowing our team to support local projects, charities, and foster skill development and well-being.

Lian’s usual role within the Central Lovat team is Positive Impact Manager. A day in the life of Lian includes championing our B Corp certification in all aspects of the business including a strong focus on community relationships, education and driving responsible tourism. It was therefore a natural step for Lian to launch an educational project with a local school.

“Our guests are always keen to pack light when they travel to us- loading the car up and never really having enough space, even with a roof box! Each holiday maker will most certainly include their preferred toiletries with them. Many of these are minis or half full so they can pack lighter, so these are frequently binned at park when their holiday comes to an end. Given that we saw circa 46,500 guests at Lovat Parks in 2022 and 18,500 of these at our Cornish parks we wondered if we could intercept this waste and create something purposeful.

My idea stemmed from seeing numerous holiday toiletries packaging left in our accommodations and bin stores-shampoos, baby lotions, shower gels…..time and time again. We decided to learn a little more around how we could put these to better use.

We already had a great relationship with MyGroup, who can recycle the un-recyclables-they shared with us that much of this packaging can not be recycled through usual household collections.

So we got started. We created some collection stands with a local design company Pickle, local to our Cornish parks. These went in to our reception areas for the start of the 2022 season. We also put one in to a local primary school in Newquay and introduced this with educational sessions in partnership with Beach Guardian. Pupils learned about plastic pollution and how we can keep our beaches clean as well as diverting waste from landfill. We asked the school to contribute their toiletries packaging from home too and added these to our Cornish parks’ collections. Guests, pupils, teachers and team contributed to 8.44kg being uplifted by MyGroup early 2023.

These were then soon transformed in to a mud kitchen which I presented to the school in early May. The pupils loved being able to see and feel the small flecks of colour from their packaging and understanding this circular story that they all contributed to. – hopefully inspiring future conservationists .”

Miss Savage, Headteacher at Summercourt Academy added;

“Summercourt Academy were very fortunate to be involved in a local community recycling project lead by Lovat Parks. The school community were invited to drop off any toiletry products, which are unable to be recycled using the County Council options, at a designated drop off location at school. The team at Lovat Parks then collected these items and used them to create a ‘mud kitchen’ for Summercourt pupils which has been placed in our Forest School area to support the pupils with their creative and explorative learning.

In addition to this Lovat Parks volunteers came into Summercourt to deliver educational workshops to each Class to increase the knowledge and understanding of our pupils linked to the importance of recycling and the impact rubbish has on our environment and the world overall.

The pupils thoroughly enjoyed the educational workshops and were also very thankful for the ‘mud kitchen’. They were fascinated by how the products had been recycled to create a resource we could then use.

This wouldn’t be something that would have been achieved without the support of the volunteers who work alongside Lovat Parks.

A huge thankyou from all of us at Summercourt.”

In 2024, we will be rolling out this project at a New Forest primary school close to Green Hill Farm Holiday Village.

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