South Lakeland Parks love their lakes, do you?

South Lakeland Parks love their lakes, do you?

Holiday park group South Lakeland Parks has been the first South Lakes tourism group to support Nurture Lakeland’s lake loving environmental campaign Love Your Lakes.

South Lakeland Parks represents four popular Lake District holiday parks including White Cross Bay in Windermere and Fallbarrow Park in Bowness. The company has always shown a commitment to supporting the environment, raising in excess of £50,000 for local conservation through Nurture Lakeland’s innovative ‘visitor payback scheme’ and last month offered further evidence of this commitment by offering their support to the Love Your Lakes campaign.

Internationally recognised responsible tourism organisation, Nurture Lakeland, is delighted that they have chosen to offer their support.

  Love Your Lakes will be working with tourism businesses and local communities around Lake Windermere to help improve the water quality of the lake. The campaign will be working to highlight the problems that phosphates entering the lake from laundry and dishwashing products can cause.

Too much phosphate can lead to the growth of blue-green algae. This toxic algae led to the cancellation of the Great North Swim due to the health implications it posed to humans and pets.

With the help of Love Your Lakes, everyone who lives, works and plays around the lake will be able to do their bit to help hold back the tide of phosphates washing into the lake by switching to phosphate-free laundry and dishwashing products.

Love Your Lakes Project Manager, Amy McLoughlin said,

“Everyone loves the lakes and they need our help. They’re a place for recreation, relaxation and a valuable resource helping to bring in more than 15 million tourists to the area each year. We can help to protect them for future generations by making small changes now.”

Two of South Lakeland Parks’ sites sit on the shores of Windermere.  Both White Cross Bay and Fallbarrow enjoy lake frontages, providing great views for visitors.  The company recognises the importance that the lake plays in the quality of many people’s holidays and in the popularity of their sites.

Caroline Farrer, Group Marketing Manager for South Lakeland Parks said, 

“We’ve supported Nurture Lakeland and its campaigns for a few years now. When the opportunity arose to work on a project protecting the most famous and visited lake in the region, we naturally volunteered. 

The care and maintenance of Windermere is a huge priority, not only to the region but to us as an accommodation provider.  Two of our parks enjoy a lake frontage and we want owners and visitors to continue to be able to use it for leisure pursuits.  Not only are we supporting this campaign financially but we have also ensured that our parks use only phosphate free products. We’ll be encouraging visitors and owners to follow suit by stocking only phosphate free products in our shops and raising their awareness of the campaign with posters and visitor information.”

Last year, Love Your Lakes benefitted Bassenthwaite Lake and Derwentwater by working one-to-one with thousands of local residents and hundreds of holiday accommodation businesses to influence the choice of products that they used. Over the next year, Love Your Lakes will be focusing its efforts on Windermere.

Like South Lakeland Parks, you could help love your lakes by making the switch to phosphate free products and making the change is easier than you might think. 

Caroline Farrer said,

‘We were surprised at how simple it was to make the switch to being phosphate free.  The list of products is extensive and includes many well recognised brands such as Fairy and Surf.  We haven’t had to compromise on cost or quality and that’s a message we’ll be passing onto our visitors so that they follow suit.” 

To find out more about the campaign and to see what phosphate products you could be using, visit www.loveyourlakes.org

For more information about South Lakeland Parks visit www.southlakelandparks.co.uk or call 015395 69830.