ESG

We want to help encourage more members and guests to move towards electric or hybrid vehicles. To do this, we know we need to help with “range anxiety” and the ability to charge quickly and efficiently. Together with our partners EVC, we have big ambitions to install EV charging across all our sites.

Due to the large surface area of our pools, we experience a huge amount of heat loss into the atmosphere throughout the day. By building all new pools with covers, we can reduce this heat loss whilst the club is closed, which in turn allows us to turn down our boilers and reduce our energy consumption.

We are constantly using data to understand and gain insight as to how we can improve in these areas. By investing in effective systems, we can start to look at ways to reduce our energy usage. Systems can pinpoint where energy may be lost or identify spikes in usage that can be investigated and reduced.

To encourage our teams to become invested in our sustainability goals, we’ve brought in an Energy Savings Initiative with a financial bonus system. This is based on reducing our energy usage year on year and can be achieved from all the little things we see everyday. These include closing doors, making sure windows are closed and not running air conditioning when windows are open.

Following the successful introduction of CHP at five of our clubs recently, we are now in discussion with suppliers with a view to installing these at some or all of our clubs in the near future.

A CHP is effectively a large engine which converts gas into electricity. Gas is cheaper to buy and means we can use less of it. As the engine produces electric it also produces lots of heat which we use to heat the swimming pools, meaning we use less energy overall.

We are looking at every single avenue to try to stop using plastic wherever possible. So far, changes include the removal of plastic straws and single use plastic toiletries in our hotel rooms, as well as replacing plastic with bamboo golf tees in our retail areas.

Our food suppliers are committed to reducing plastic packaging, and we are also working with our coffee suppliers to reduce waste via the introduction of reusable cups.

We intend to install solar power at selected clubs to save over 16% of our electric bills per club. We all know what solar can do for our energy bills, and with the current cost of living, anything we can do to reduce our reliance on the grid will help.

At some of our sites we are also able to supply energy back to the grid to help others reach their energy reduction aspirations. This helps us offset the large cost of solar which means it can be viable in a commercial setting.

We’ve all seen the horrific images of landfill sites, and we also know how much rubbish our sites can generate. We must do our bit to reduce this wherever we can. Right now, as well as introducing recycling bins across our clubs, we’ve also started to use our coffee grounds to fertilise the plants and flower beds around the clubs.