How our business affects you
Our journey to starting Live Slow Campers began as we started to look for a better way to live our lives, amongst many other things we considered the careers we had, the food we ate and the waste we created. The changes we felt we needed to make ultimately led us to an off grid lifestyle and into the world of van life, after 14 months of exploration meeting some truly great people we decided to set up a business where we could put our skills and experience to the test whilst also keeping control of our impact and where possible giving back to the world.
'living slow since 2019'
Live Slow Campers is a small business run with strong ethics and consideration for the environment and how our existence impacts it. We only use products that are the most eco friendly in their range, whether it is tubeless sealant or low V.O.C glue and paint, if there is not an environmentally friendly option we have to question whether it is necessary. Ultimately our aim is for all our builds to start their lives in the best and greenest way possible, therefore each new build receives a carbon footprint calculation which allows us to monitor our impact and provide insight for our customers.
In order to create a carbon calculation we consider the following aspects of each build:
energy supply and usage - previously powered directly by solar now with a green energy supplier
materials - working with local suppliers where possible to limit delivery miles
fuel - lpg and diesel for testing
deliveries and transport - combining deliveries, reduce plastic packaging request and alternative fuel for our transport
onward travel - we include 5000 miles onward travel to take a share of resposibilty of future emissions
This information is then used to create an estimated weight in tonnes of co2 we have produced or contributed to during the build process, using this number we can then calculate how many trees need planting to offset the carbon foot print of each build.
1 Tree = 0.16 tonnes CO2
We work with Carbon Footprint Ltd to plant trees throughout the UK and also support their international tree buddy system which allows us to contribute to our carbon impact. So far we have planted 24 trees in the Yorkshire and Humber area and donated over £300 towards tree buddy systems supporting action against deforestation in the Amazon rainforest.
However the work does not stop there, we are always working to reduce and re-use our day to day waste whilst also looking for new and eco friendly products and consumable to further limit our environmental impact. Here are some examples of other things we do:
careful waste management- we work with our business neighbours here, all our cardboard and plastic packaging is re used by the local auto repair shop to package their sold parts. All plastic and metal is sorted and recycled locally and our organic waste is composted and used on the adjacent arable land. the small amount of leftover non recyclable waste is sent to an energy from waste plant.
No flushing loo - our workshop has a composting loo which separates number 1's from number 2's and safely discarded, this saves approx 35 litres of water per day
choosing our suppliers - we have carefully selected our suppliers to ensure that we operate on the least amount of deliveries possible whilst also reducing the amount of plastic packaging and paper waste.
wood management - all our off cuts are sorted into 3 piles; reusable, for burning and recyclable, we try to always find a use for them whether it is a handy jig, drilling mount or another sanding block.
daily commute- currently our daily commute is done in our alternative fuel campervan which is very efficient and runs off LPG which is a much cleaner fuel to diesel and petrol. in the future we hope to move to fully electric transport