Five tips to reduce the impact of your wedding on the environment.

Food and Beverages

Choose a local supplier who uses local produce. Not only will this reduce emissions caused by transportation, but it will support local farmers. Insist caterers separate and recycle food waste. Plan a menu using simple, fresh dishes, reducing single-use plastic packaging. Identify a local charity* or homeless shelter to donate any ‘still good to eat’ leftover food items
For the bar service, support local breweries and vine yards. Choose single serve recyclable glass bottles over plastic serve ware.

Décor, Lighting and Flower

Hire or borrow vintage pieces. Upcycle everyday items as decorations and use solar lights and candles where possible. Rest assured all of our lighting use LED bulbs!
Use a local florist and choose native, in-season blooms. Consider donating flowers to a retirement home* after your wedding to bring joy to others.

Transport

Encourage your guests to travel by public transport*. (We provide lots of information on trains, buses and ferries that service the local area in our travel pack)
Arrange for shuttles* to and from your wedding. Plan to have your wedding and reception in the same place!

Stationery & Favours

Go digital! Reduce the number of printed pieces. Choose paper products made from recycled materials. Choose all-natural wedding favours like little glass jars of homemade jam or limoncello

Gifts and Jewellery

Choose hand-made, local items for your gift registry. We are surrounded by an enormous talent of local artists and craftspeople*.Request that gifts remain unwrapped to save on paper. When choosing jewellery, consider re-purposing family or vintage jewellery, recycling the metals and stones. Make it super personal and design and make your own rings*

*Our team can help you with this!

Join us as we continue to reduce our environmental impact

Polhawn Fort is located in a beautiful corner of a beautiful part of the world. The outlook from the Fort is one of the pristine Cornish Coast as far as the eye can see.

We are fully aware that it is this outlook that attracts our clients initially and since the business began, 35 years ago, it has been a major objective to reduce the impact our business activities have on the environment while continuing to share it with all those who choose to come and celebrate their wedding here.

Sounds simple enough. Unfortunately, the down side of being in such an incredible location is that we don’t have easy access to some services that more urban businesses take for granted. Being tucked into a cliff on the end of a peninsula is an incredible spot for the most important day of your life, but it’s not particularly attractive to the driver of the skip lorry or the commercial sized dustbin lorry!

As a major employer and generator of revenue for our local community we understand the requirement to incorporate the creation of social and environmental value into every facet of our business. We have taken steps to reduce the negative impacts our actions and activities have on the environment and the local community. Armed with our aim to create memorable weddings and experiences which don’t cost the earth, we have refused to accept no for an answer when it comes to increasing our sustainability.

By joining forces with other like-minded organisations we have been able to inspire change. Some things have been simply a matter of switching supplier, but every decision we have made in this movement to a greener future has been carefully considered, scratching beneath the surface and working out how we can embed the change into our everyday business model. With a new sustainability policy in place to guide us we have now taken the next step of working with our couples who care to join us in reducing the negative impacts of their event on the environment. A single wedding can produce up to 300kg of waste.

By providing accessible and clearly identifiable methods of recycling as many products as possible and encouraging our clients to incorporate recyclable/hired or re-purposable items into their plans we can reduce our non-recyclable waste dramatically. A key factor in the success of this reduction in waste is to engage with our clients early on in their wedding planning journey. By sharing ideas and recycling success stories couples become engaged in the concept and join us in developing a mindful approach to every decision they make.

Our food waste recycling program is a shining example of how this can work. Our food waste is utilised as feedstock for the Anaerobic Digestion plant at Langage farms in Smithaleigh, near Plymouth. The Anaerobic Digestion plant produces electricity and heat for use in the dairy products factory, and residual bio-fertiliser is applied to the farmland to grow forage for their Jersey Herd. The milk returns to the products factory for processing and the cycle begins again!