Our offices are in a village in the Dartmoor National Park. It's an area of outstanding beauty and being environmentally aware comes naturally to us.

We recognise that the majority believe that the quantities of carbon dioxide being added to the atmosphere from burning oil, coal and gas will cause average global temperatures to rise in the future. The result of that is unpredictable but may include effects on the climate, sea levels, food production and water supply.

Rather than present those changes to future generations as a fait accompli we believe it our duty to try and 'do our bit' to reduce the contribution running our business is likely to have on those changes.

Since 2004 all the electricity we use has been generated from renewable sources. We use EDF’s Green Electricity tariff. We constantly monitor our electricity consumption and regularly review our efforts to reduce our consumption.

When our conventional bulbs blow we replace them using low energy bulbs.

We off-set all our carbon emissions from burning natural gas and vehicle fuel through a programme set up through Climate Care (www.climatecare.org) . If you visit their website you’ll see how you can offset the carbon footprint from your Helpful Holiday too.

We use local facilities and employ local people where possible.

Many staff walk to work or car share, some work from home.

We encourage all our owners to use low energy light bulbs and invest in insulation in their properties.

We promote local food and shopping.

We await with great anticipation the large scale production of practical electric cars.

We are open to practical suggestions of how we could do more. Please email us at help@helpfulholidays.com if you would like to suggest how we could do more to reduce our carbon emissions.

We support one main charity every year; in 2010 it’s The Devon Air Ambulance Trust. We encourage holidaymakers to donate £5 (or a sum of choice) with their booking and we match the total amount at the end of the year. We promote the work of our charities and assist in raising their profile through our own marketing activities throughout the year.

In 2009 we did this for Farms For City Children, in 2008 for The RNLI and in 2007 for the The Marine Conservation Society.

This year we are donating the VAT we save through the reduction in VAT to our regular and other charities.

Pink Days, Red Nose Days and ‘in need’; days of many types are enthusiastically supported with dressing up, cake baking and raffles (see snaps). The funds raised are sent to charities such as Children in Need , Cancer Research and Macmillan Nurse campaigns.