Sustainability Policy 2022/23
Irish Landmark Trust is an educational charity operating in the Heritage and Tourism sectors.
Our guiding mission is to ‘save, share and sustain’ Ireland’s unique built heritage across the island of Ireland. We believe that conserving Ireland’s built heritage through the use of traditional craft skills and traditional materials and giving old buildings a viable future is an inherently sustainable activity. We recognise that there is more to be done to make the buildings in our care energy efficient. We are aware too that our company activities impact the environment and we are committed to alleviating those negative impacts.
We give old buildings a new use that preserves and sustains them for future generations. Our core values are Conservation, Education, Guest Experience and Sustainability.
We identify buildings at risk and fundraise to save them, often working in partnership with owners and other organisations. Using traditional and craft skills we carefully restore the properties to as close to their original condition as possible. We share the properties as unique short-term holiday lets. In addition, we share our learning through a variety of platforms and mediums. The properties are maintained and sustained by the generation of income from holidays. We provide unique experiences for our guests; by staying with us, they learn something about our unique built heritage and they become part of the legacy of these buildings by contributing to the buildings survival.
We support our local communities by creating local employment, and using local business and trades where they are able to meet our standards of conservation work.
We create the benefits of tourism for the locality without building dedicated holiday accommodation. We believe our work enhances the local environment and improves community morale by restoring and repurposing old buildings.
Our aim is to extend our core principles of conservation and sustainability into our tourism operation and across all of our company activities. Irish Landmark Trust recognises that sustainability is a journey of continuous improvement, and we are committed to collectively working to improve our sustainability across the organisation. To do this we commit to the following;
- We will train head office staff and House Managers to develop and implement sustainable practices in their work.
- We will feed improvement ideas back into our business processes.
- We commit to measuring and reducing energy and water consumption, waste and production.
- We will support sustainable construction practices in our new projects.
- We will collaborate with other stakeholders including the Heritage Council and SEAI to share knowledge and improve the sustainability of our work.
- We aspire to innovation and excellence in the field of energy efficiency in heritage buildings.
- We commit to reporting on our progress.
We will review this policy every year.