A Carbon Neutral Lakeland Inn

The Sun Inn takes steps to reduce the carbon footprint of all our activities as well as that for heating, lighting, and cooking.

We source locally available products wherever possible to avoid transport costs.


During your stay with us, all carbon energy used for heating, lighting and cooking will be offset via the World Land Trust, www.carbonbalanced.org, which works, amongst others, with the following organizations:

Carbon sequestration involves removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it in a "sink". A sink, in this instance, can be described as a physical state or geological location in which the carbon dioxide can have no "greenhouse" effect in the atmosphere.

The World Land Trust operates carbon sequestration schemes involving reforestation. The principle behind storing carbon using reforestation activities is based on the fact that plants use carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as building blocks for cellular growth.

Tree biomass, when dry, is made up of approx. 50% carbon. Thus if an area of forest is planted and a respective increase in tree biomass is measured. Carbon will have been stored, or sequestered, in that area. Furthermore due to natural processes associated with cycles of tree growth and the physical processes that trees undergo, carbon will be stored in the soils and organic litter that surround the forest.

This "above ground" and "below ground" increase in carbon storage has been the subject of extensive study over the last 20 years, it has been found that it is measurable and more importantly region and species specific. Some of the interesting results that have come from research have shown that generally tropical forests exhibit the fastest accumulation of "carbon stocks" during growth of relatively new forests. Boreal and temperate forests show slower accumulation of carbon, but have greater below ground carbon stocks associated with them.

More recent research has also shown that interestingly mature forests continue to remove carbon from the atmosphere. The mechanisms behind this are not fully understood, but current research may shed some light on this concept and open up future legislation for the use of standing forests as carbon sinks.