Green Tourism
Alongside our Green Impact programme, we are also piloting Green Tourism accreditation at eight of our sites.
Green Tourism is a programme that recognises the commitment of tourism businesses and organisations that are actively working to become more sustainable. Since 1997, it has empowered those in hospitality and tourism to advance their sustainability practices and standards and evidence their sustainability activity.
A Sustainable Future
With criteria aligned to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, Green Tourism is one of the most robust and most widely adopted industry frameworks, with a 3,000-strong global community of members.
Green Tourism strives to support its members – from venues to visitor attractions, hotel groups to destination organisations – to do business better for people, places and our planet, building a more sustainable future for us all.
Our Awards
English Heritage site teams work through the Green Tourism criteria and are awarded with a bronze, silver or gold award. The first four English Heritage sites to go through the process (Scarborough Castle, Lindisfarne Priory, Whitby Abbey and Old Wardour Castle) were delighted to achieve silver awards.
Mount Grace Priory, Walmer Castle, Carisbrooke Castle and Belsay Hall went even further and were awarded gold. At these sites, sustainability is woven into many activities, from sourcing of cleaning products to new staff and volunteer inductions. The teams are enthusiastic about what they’ve achieved by working together and the recognition they’ve received.
David Hannah, Mount Grace Priory Cluster Manager, said:
Highlights of our application include how we are making enhancements to the biodiversity of the site and working with nature to encourage the site to flourish, and we were also congratulated on the work we are doing with the wider community including collaborating with the North York Moors National Park.
Nina Pace, Walmer Castle Manager, said:
Having been a part of the Green Impact Programme pilot last year, we jumped at the chance of applying for a Green Tourism award. The Green Tourism toolkit was laid out in a way that made it easy to track progress and highlight all that we were doing, particularly those things that had become business as usual and now passed under the radar! Here at Walmer becoming more sustainable and driving improvement is a way of life and has become embedded in who we are and what we do.
Green Tourism volunteer Nicola Mackley said:
The Green Tourism process took us through a series of questions covering all aspects of sustainability – ranging from how we avoid or reduce waste through to what we are doing to improve biodiversity on-site. For each question we had to provide evidence in the form of a photo or weblink to support our answer.
We answered around 130 questions so inevitably we weren't able to say yes to every question. For any where we couldn't, we discussed possible solutions and added these to our action plan.
It felt really rewarding to achieve a silver with our first trial site and more recently to get gold at four of our sites!
Find out more
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Protecting Hurst Castle
In February 2021, a section of wall on the 19th-century east wing collapsed. Find out about our major project to protect and bring stability to the castle.
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Sustainability
The climate and ecological crises are two of the biggest challenges facing our historic sites. Find out how we are reducing our environmental impact.
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Climate Action Plan 2022–2025
Find out how our plan will create meaningful and sustainable change, from reducing carbon emissions to waste management and biodiversity.