The Swinton Estate, near Masham, has launched Nourish, a scheme aimed at helping businesses understand and reduce their carbon footprint, improve biodiversity, and achieve their sustainability goals.
The scheme allows business owners to invest in the estate’s Carbon Plus credits, BNG units from their habitat bank, environmental investment schemes, and local community projects.
Membership benefits include enrolment at the Climate Action Academy and nature-based welfare schemes designed for the benefit of the workforce.
As Nourish is based on The Swinton Estate, members can benefit from ‘real-world experiences’ in nature and receive a practical sustainability education, from attending tree planting days to taking part in species surveys to river water testing.
The benefits of investing in carbon sequestration and biodiversity can be ‘easily demonstrated’, using cutting-edge laser scanning, drones and acoustic monitoring that record progress.
The Climate Action Academy brings together leading speakers from the world of sustainability at Environment Forums that combine classroom learning with hands on activity.
Running alongside this are their Carbon Literacy courses designed for the SME sector.
Nourish says it encourages partners to share best practice on reducing their own environmental impact, and also ‘enhances the wellbeing of corporate teams by providing focused learning in a natural environment’.
Iain Shelton, chief executive at Swinton Estate, said: “Here at Swinton Estate, we are the custodians of a fragile landscape that has the potential to provide many natural solutions to the climate related challenges that we face today.
“We have an established sustainability track record that we are proud of, so Nourish will empower our partners to invest and develop their own programmes.
“Many businesses are committed to climate action but at the same time lack the confidence to invest in it.
“Nourish resolves this dilemma, with a partnership opportunity that is built on trust and provides tangible results.”
The Swinton Estate is already carbon neutral, with ambitions to reduce emissions a further 30 per cent by 2040.
Swinton Park, the hotel on the estate, was the first hotel in the UK to install a carbon neutral bio-mass boiler in 2006.
More recently, over 40,000 trees have been planted as part of a wider commitment to planting 60,000 trees over the next 20 years, along with the restoration of extensive tracts of peatland to create a carbon sink by building leaky dams and planting sphagnum moss.
Hill Cross Furniture has become one of the first business to enrol into Swinton Estate’s Nourish Programme.
Speaking about becoming a Nourish partner, Ricard Barker, founder of Hill Cross Furniture, said: “Hill Cross has been working with Swinton for over 20 years, supplying them with furniture.
“As we have evolved, sustainability has become a core element of what we do, and this partnership programme helps us keep focus on our Net Zero commitment.
“We are thrilled about being one of the first companies to sign up and look forward to meeting other businesses to share experiences, learn from and invest together in the environment around us.”