When we opened our B&B in 2012, we knew we wanted to offer our guests a comfortable room, a fantastic breakfast, great customer service and all this from the heart of the city centre of Inverness. However, the impact our wee business might have on the environment was a concern to us. How do we offer quality, comfort and great value for money for our guests while reducing the carbon footprint of our B&B?
We thought of a few ideas and implemented these immediately – buying as much food as we can from local suppliers, using LED lightbulbs wherever possible, asking guests to re-use towels, guests pre-order breakfast choices to reduce food waste, recycling waste, purchasing supplies locally and providing a glass bottle of fresh, Scottish water in the guest bedrooms daily.
Then we realised we could go a little further and created our Environmental Policy, which is in every guest room. In this, we mention the green policies we’ve had from the start and encourage guests to turn off lights and appliances when they leave their room for example. This policy has worked well for our B&B and our guests appreciate it too.
A few years later we discovered the Green Leader Programme from TripAdvisor and we liked the ethos of this award scheme. We applied, detailing our green policies and we were presented with the Bronze Award!
We were really chuffed (Scottish word that means pleased!) and took on more advice on how to become a more eco-friendly B&B. We started to choose suppliers with green credentials, reduce the amount of plastic used, monitoring our utility usage and even planting native, Scottish plants in our garden (check out our thistles!)
We’re always striving to improve our business, especially its green practices and to balance the comfort and service that we provide while respecting our environment.
