Despite being a small business, we believe it is crucial to play our part towards Scotland’s net-zero ambitions. This blog goes into more detail about our sustainability statement.

Supporting national park charities

We are based in Loch Lomond & The Trossachs and committed to helping conserve and protect the National Park. We pledge to donate 5-10% of our annual profits through a mix of financial contribution and free (or reduced fee) time to support charitable organisations within the National Park.

In Drymen, we created at no charge a comprehensive village website and directory designed to promote local businesses (buy local) and support local clubs and organisations. For the Friends of Loch Lomond & The Trossachs, the independent conservation and heritage charity for the National Park, we are business supporters of the ‘Our Park’ scheme. I am also a trustee and provide photography and other support wherever I can to support the projects across the National Park.

Our clients

We also seek to encourage and showcase positive actions by our clients to reduce emissions and make their organisations more sustainable. Our experience is that customers value these interventions and that good reactions stimulate increased efforts. Here are some excellent examples from a few of our clients:

The Oak Tree Inn has installed 156 solar panels which produce power for their kitchen, bar, restaurant, and refrigeration units. They also have introduced a market garden to supply the vegetables and herbs used in the food they serve. Meanwhile, St Mocha use an electric vehicle to gather coffee grounds from their coffee shops. These are dried in the Oak Tree’s biomass shed and used as fuel and in their palm-free natural soap.

We were pleased to help write successful funding applications for a new pontoon at Balmaha, helping improve water transport options for the public (cutting car journeys) and the new Loch Lomond Coffee roasting facility.

Fraser C Robb has also made their building much more fuel-efficient, with biomass and solar panels. In addition, they have helped switch commercial and domestic customers from garden/ground care equipment that use fuel to greener battery versions. 

Drymen Business Hub organises meetings between local businesses and Business Gateway experts to reduce car journeys to Stirling. Again we were able to help source funding with grants from Stirling Council and Forth Valley & Lomond Leader. For FVL Leader, we produced video content to demonstrate the success of their interventions to help the rural economy contribute towards Net-Zero; you can watch the video above.

Forth Environment Link commissioned us to produce short films about their support to Neighbour Food operations across Scotland. You can watch one of those films above to see the benefits of Neighbour Food for both consumers and producers.

Duff Christmas Tree Farm has numerous initiatives to reduce carbon, including planting two trees for each one felled. They have created new woodlands as well as protected ancient woodlands. The team works by hand as much as possible to reduce the use of machinery and use recyclable labels on their trees.

Finally, at Loch Katrine, the SOS – Save our Steamship appeal will hopefully be successful with Sir Walter Scott Steamship returning to service in the summer. There are plans to use a new ground-breaking green fuel-HVO-which is, a hydrogen and vegetable oil-based fuel, instead of the current diesel mix. It is estimated that this will allow a staggering decrease of emissions of over 90%. In addition, the Steamship promotes Active Travel connecting communities by water rather than by road.

Park Life Magazine

Some of this content was used in a recent article for Park Life Magazine, the free magazine for West Stirlingshire, Loch Lomond, Trossachs and Bearsden & Milngavie.

About

Based in Loch Lomond, Paul Saunders Marketing works with clients throughout Scotland, providing marketing consultancy and creative digital media for businesses, charities and organisations of all sizes. Services include marketing, commercial photography, brand design, website design, video production and social media, events & PR. Call Paul on 01360 661029 or get in touch via the contact page to find out more.