Derbyshire Heritage Walks
Environmental Mission

One very important consideration for us as a business is minimising the environmental impact of our activities. The high visitor numbers using the Peak District National Park places a high stress on the landscape, and has already caused quite significant damage to some areas.

To minimise the environmental impact on the Peak District landscape, and on the wider countryside too, we try wherever possible to

• make both the start and end points of our walks easily accessible by public transport, and
• encourage our customers to use public transport where practical.

By doing this, we hope we are doing our own small part in helping to reduce the traffic on the already crowded Peak District roads and cut CO₂ emissions. It may not be a huge reduction in either but, to borrow a phrase from a certain well-known supermarket, every little helps.

In addition to encouraging the use of public transport, we also work to reduce our environmental impact by being as paperless an organisation as we realistically can be. To this end, we

• use electonic communication and payment methods wherever possible, accepting payments for our walks via PayPal and
• sending all booking confirmations and associated paperwork by e-mail.

We can where required send conventional printed paperwork by post, although we do prefer not to if at all possible.

Other measures that we take to help minimise the environmental impact of our activities include

• only using refillable water bottles, and encouraging our customers to do the same,
• avoiding the use of pre-packaged foods where possible, and
• using second-hand equipment where practical, especially computers and other electronics.

The Peak District Environmental Quality Mark

In recognition of our efforts to minimise the environmental impact of our activities, Derbyshire Heritage Walks has been awarded the Peak District Environmental Quality Mark. This means that we have been independently assessed and audited, and certified as operating in as environmentally friendly and sustainable a way as possible - making us one of only 54 businesses in the Peak District to hold this prestigious certification.