Recycling
The Centre recycles drinks cans, food cans, plastics and paper and composts vegetable waste where appropriate. Recycling bins are placed at strategic locations in the Centre.
Lighting :
Low energy light bulbs used throughout the Centre. Electricity supplies are on an EDF Green tariff sourced from renewables.
Solar panels
We have installed solar hot water panels and a wood burning Rayburn in one of our staff houses
Light tubes
Several of our new buildinga have light tubes which bring light through mirrored tubes to potentially dark corridors and kitchen areas

Ground source heat pump heating system
A new extension, East Hallsannery, was built in 2002 to provide additional
accommodation and meeting facilities for the field centre. To make the building more sustainable it was decided to go for a heating system which used a renewable resource. The ground acts as a huge store of heat (with the input principally from solar heat) and can this can be extracted using a heat exchanger. This type of system is used widely in Europe though has yet to catch on in this country despite the many advantages:

Technical: Greatly reduced CO2 emissions
De-centralisation of power supply: no need to supply fuel nation-wide
Economic: Greatly reduced transportation risks and costs
Short to medium term pay back time
Low operating costs (no oil or gas purchase)
Reduction of carbon tax for domestic and industrial property
Affordable and efficient (1 kW in, up to 4 kW out)

At Hallsannery we have placed 'slinky' coils in three trenches in the fields adjoining the house, these have water pumped around them which absorbs ground heat. This is transported back to the ‘GeoKitten’ heat exchanger ( Kensa Engineering, Falmouth, Cornwall) This extracts the heat and this is linked to an underfloor heating system to heat the house. The system does require some electricity to drive the pumps and the heat exchanger but this is offset by the heat energy gained.
The system does work and provides a lovely warm house. For every 1 kW electrical energy used to run the system, between 2 and 4 kW heat transferred into the domestic heating