Our people, animals and environment are an integral and fundamental part of Folly Farm.
We recognise that we need to sustainably balance environmental, social and economic factors in equal harmony to interact with our planet responsibly. We are invested in ensuring we’re able to meet our present needs whilst also meeting the needs of future generations.
We remain environmentally conscious, and as a company look to be innovative and forward thinking. We re-invest heavily every year and constantly evaluate our systems and practices to ensure they are current, relevant and best practice to our industry.
This drive for self-improvement is what makes us a credible tourist attraction. One which promotes sustainability and seeks long term success. We understand that our activities have an impact on the environment in terms of use of raw materials, emissions to air and water and waste generation, and therefore we seek to minimise this as far as reasonably practicable.
Our Green Team meets regularly to talk about ways we can make a difference. This is sometimes about saving energy, sometimes about recycling, and sometimes about how we can help our community.
We’re proud holders of the Green Key environmental accreditation. The eco-accreditation promotes sustainable tourism and guides businesses towards best environmental practices. We adhere to National and International Green Key criteria that have been designed to be easily understood by visitors, feasible for the tourism industry, and can be clearly verified through control checks. Green Key accreditation not only recognises our commitment to being environmentally responsible, it provides our visitors with the confidence they’re visiting a sustainable tourist attraction.
Read more about Green Key.
We’ve invested £700,000 in a biomass heating system using wood chip that is 100% renewable. It heats our fairground, Carousel Woods indoor play area, Jolly Barn, the Hungry Farmer restaurant and Tropical Trails exhibit, as well as our gift shop and staff offices. It also supplies our hot water. The system saves 700 tonnes of carbon emissions annually. A second biomass system has been built to service our holiday park too. So, when you stay with us you be sure that the heating and hot water is sustainable too.
We’ve invested £250,000 in solar panels on our funfair roof to make our own electricity using the power of the sun. This means we’re generating all the electricity needed to run Folly Farm without having to use the power supply for our local area. We even power our sustainable electric go-karts using the electricity generated through these panels!
We’ve also invested in “eco” hand dryers for the toilets and hand washing areas across the park. These environmentally friendly dryers not only use less electricity but they reduce waste from the use of paper towels. We also went one step further and fitted auto-sensors on all the lights in our toilet blocks so they turn off when they’re not in use.
We use a lot of light bulbs in our vintage fairground – a whopping 10,000. So, it seemed obvious to replace them all with low energy versions – saving 70% of the energy needed.
We’ve got our own willow plantation because this is what our giraffes in particular, and many of our other animals, like to munch on. Now we’re self-sufficient and we don’t have to have to have it delivered which means fewer vehicles on the road and we’re making good use of our land. Best of all when the giraffes have finished eating all the leaves and even the bark (it’s a great dental workout for them!), we chip what remains and re-use it for bedding for our animals. How about that for a no-waste regime?!
We’ve a lot of farm land that isn’t developed so we make good use of it by planting trees and by restoring hedgerows because conserving native species like dormice and voles is important too. We plant a lot of trees and we host volunteer tree planting days organised by our conservation officer Jack Gradidge.
We’re also proud to have acted as a distribution hub for the Welsh Government, Woodland Trust and Llais Y Goedwig ‘My Tree, Our Forest’ initiative which gave away tens of thousands of trees for planting.
We’re turning areas of our farm land over to nature as part of our native wildlife conservation efforts. We’ve even been using our rare-breed Bagot goats to help clear scrub for native plant and animals to thrive.
Yes that’s right, poop! We’ve got a lot of it so when we clean out our animal enclosures, we collect it and spread it on our land to grow the willow and other vegetation for our animals. It goes full-circle. And it allows us to talk about poop and that’s memorable!
We’ve even donated our rhino poop to the National Botanic Gardens of Wales to help fertilise exotic plants in its Tropical Dome!
We’re delighted to have joined Pembrokeshire Nature Partnership to help conserve our local landscape and implement nature recovery plans. Read more about Pembrokeshire Nature Partnership.
We’re passionate about preventing extinction so take part in breeding and education programmes and fundraise to protect animals in the wild.
Our local community are our visitors, our team and our friends. We must be a responsible and sustainable business for them.