Holkham’s 2024 WONDER wins

December 19, 2024 | WONDER | 6 minute read

At Holkham, we’re always striving to be more sustainable, working on our three ‘WONDER’ goals: to pioneer environmental gain, to champion low carbon living, and to tread lightly and stamp out waste. In this journal, Sustainability Manager Sue Penlington looks back at Holkham’s WONDER wins from this year.

As we come to the end of the year it’s always good to reflect on what we’ve achieved, the challenges we have faced and what we have learnt. All of this will help us to move further and faster next year. 

 The main focus of 2024 has been to deliver some of the projects on our carbon negative roadmap. That’s our journey to reducing our carbon emissions so that we can reach our goal of going beyond net zero — we want to take in more carbon than we emit. This year, we’ve made some decent progress in trialling three alternatives to fossil fuels.

We have trialled the use of HVO fuel (hydro-treated vegetable oil) in place of diesel which reduces carbon emissions by 90%. We have used this in our landscape equipment and machinery, including lawnmowers and gators.

We entered into unchartered territory too this year. We have trialled using hydrogen instead of diesel, which many think may be the future power for larger machinery like tractors. This scale is a while off, but we trialled hydrogen-powered tower lights for our weddings in September. With zero carbon emissions and a silent operation, they will no doubt feature more in the future as the availability of hydrogen increases.

Finally, we also used Futuria gas in the shower blocks at our holiday park, Pinewoods. Futuria is a greener version of traditional LPG and it gives a reduction in emissions of 32%.

We’ve also been looking into reducing the use of fossil fuels in our overnight accommodation. Norfolk’s first all-electric holiday home joined the hire fleet at Pinewoods this year, and we added an ultra-efficient air source heat pump to our new holiday let, Lapwing Cottage.

Lapwing Cottage

On the farm, we’ve undertaken a low-carbon potato trial using HVO fuel, blight resistant varieties and CCM fertiliser. Other trials include using seaweed as a biostimulant, using AI (artificial intelligence) to deliver spot spraying of herbicides (reducing the amount that we use) and also analysing the impact of different cultivation depths on our sugar beet crops.

Stamping out waste

Our war on waste continued as we moved to an estate-wide waste contract with another zero-waste-to-landfill company. This has reduced the number of bin lorries visiting the estate and gives us live data on the waste we generate, data which helps us to target our efforts so that we can make a greater impact. 

Summer 2025 saw another piece of ‘binfrastructure’ added. This time, we’ve created a bespoke compost bin for our new pizza offering at the Beach Café. Many people ‘wishcycle’ pizza boxes, meaning they put them into the recycling bin when they can’t be recycled. Our pizza boxes at the Beach Café are fully compostable, so the box and any crusts can be posted straight into our pizza box bin and taken to be composted. We also added blue glass-only bins at Wells Beach to try and increase the amount of glass we recycle. Behind the scenes, we’ve improved how we manage the waste on our construction sites and property improvements.

Communicating with visitors

We now have a space in our exhibition – Holkham Stories – which is dedicated to explaining our three WONDER goals. Through interactive displays, it explains our progress. 

At The Victoria, our hotel and restaurant,  we’ve also updated our information about the local suppliers we use for food and drinks. The menus now have a map showing our suppliers, while a wall within the restaurant tells the stories of the people behind the businesses.

What does 2025 have in store?

I’d like to have more of an impact on improving our natural capital so that we can boost biodiversity and sequester carbon, as well as providing opportunities for access and engagement with visitors.

I also want us to improve our explanations to visitors and guests about how and why they should help to separate their waste and use their car less when they stay with us.

Plus, I’m keen to get our teams more engaged, so we can make a difference across the estate.

Together we can make a huge difference and hopefully inform, inspire and influence our visitors, guests, tenants, suppliers, partners and others along the way.

Thanks to Sue for sharing her insights and reflections on 2024. Keep an eye on our journal posts, Instagram and Facebook to stay up to date.