Environmentally responsible management

Our belief

For 9 years we have managed our family campsite fully independently, not through an intermediary but through our own convictions. For us, environmental responsibility is not just adapting our work and our company so we can ride the "green" wave, or using trendy marketing or advertising campaigns. The environment is not about being trendy, it is about the health of our planet and our own survival. Environmental responsibility is much more than a corporate commitment, it is our daily way of life, and we like to share that with our employees, our friends, and our customers. 
Please note that we do not subscribe to any official environmental seal of approval as we do not identify with those brands linking "development" (even when qualified as sustainable) with "the environment". 
At Le Moulin de David we have a three-pronged approach when it comes to our environmental responsibility:

• Mutual environmental responsibility 
• Productive environmental responsibility
• Active environmental responsibility

Whether our lodges with or without sanitary or mobile homes, all were chosen from suppliers who are concerned about ethics and the preservation of the environment for both manufacturing and recycling. As for the pitches for tent or caravan, they do not receive any chemical treatment (fertilizer, pesticide, etc ...)

Mutual environmental responsibility

Just like most of you, at Le Moulin de David we replicate the good environmental practices or habits of our daily lives. Obviously, the number of people on the campsite means this can be a little more complicated, but over the years these difficulties have become a matter of habit. 
Just like at home, we do as much as we can to save energy and water and to sort and/or recycle our rubbish.  Just like at home, we use energy-saving or LED light bulbs, water savers on our taps, we add mulch to our flowerbeds to limit the need for watering from drip systems, and we sort our rubbish into three different bins. Just like at home, we don't use any chemical fertiliser, weed killer or pesticide.
And of course, all around the campsite, we have also installed systems designed for public places, for example clocks or timing devices to manage the lighting around public pathways and the toilet blocks, as well as timed taps and valves in the toilet blocks. And of course, all around the campsite, several cubic metres of mulch are needed to cover the flowerbeds, but the cuttings from our many hedges that we crush together on site helps us save a great deal on watering. Sorting rubbish is also slightly complicated on the campsite but the maintenance team ensures that sorting is done correctly into the yellow containers as well as rectifying any mistakes as needed. At the campsite we use organic waste produced by the snack bar and restaurant kitchens to produce compost for the campsite's vegetable garden.
From the 2018 season we will ask for your eco-friendly fiber by putting at your disposal a composter close to our garden. A placard near the composter will remind you what is good for the compost and what does not suit him.
It is only with your help that we can fulfil our mutual environmental responsibility…

Regularly, we try to put in place a new eco-responsible action:

• In 2016: Installation on the night parking of a charging point for electric vehicles.
• In 2017: Some BIO products (including Bergerac wines) are appearing in our grocery store. In 2019 it will be nearly 30% of the products on offer that will be organic.
• In 2018: Installation of a waste collection point for the compost that will be used on the campsite.
• In 2019: Eliminating the use of disposable plastic objects: more straws, more disposable cups and more trays for takeaway. To go beyond outright suppression, we offer alternative solutions: We have added in our welcome kit * plastic cups for multiple use (as many cups as children), we invite customers to pick up takeaway food with their own container. We deliberately did not provide a replacement for the straws. Indeed the straw, green or not, is it really necessary?

* The Welcome Kit is offered in a fabric bag in the colors of the Moulin de David. It will be very convenient to go shopping at the grocery store and avoid the use of the awful plastic bag!

Productive environmental responsibility

We wanted to go further in our environmental commitments with a productive environmental responsibility. At Le Moulin de David, we like to do our bit to help out nature and we have devoted a large area of land for developing a vegetable patch that we use for market gardening.
We run the vegetable garden according to the rules of permaculture, the main ones of which include imitating nature, organising space (what is known as design), and preserving fauna and flora needed for the optimal growth of microscopic life by avoiding chemical products and not "working" the soil.
The vegetable garden was created in 2015 and is still growing. During the winter of 2015/2016 we almost doubled its size by adding 8 crop mounds. In the spring we intend to install a chicken coop and 6 chickens which, apart from providing fresh eggs, will be a valuable asset when it comes to transforming kitchen waste into natural fertiliser.

The vegetables grown in the garden are available from the campsite shop and are used in the on-site restaurant. 

Active environmental responsibility

If you want to discover what permaculture or agroecology is during your stay (the most famous promoter of which is the farmer-philosopher Pierre Rabhi), we would be delighted to show you our vegetable garden. We will explain why we have undertaken this project, how we implement permaculture*, what the prospects are for this type of permanent culture, and why environmental resilience is so important…
We can show your children this ecosystem together, as well as the importance of each component of the food chain, how each one feeds the other, and many other things about the health of our planet.

*Permaculture is a tool of reflection and design aimed at creating sustainable human environments within the natural ecosystem upon which it relies.

Vegetable garden permaculture camping the Moulin de David