Sustainability on Red Moon
Red Moon herself is a good example of sustainable use having lived through many incarnations in her 70+ years. We strive to maintain her in great condition at all times. Work which Scott has carried out on improving her interior has mostly been done by recycling existing materials as far as possible, such as our aft crew cabin and the new seating area and chart table in the wheelhouse.
Her Gardner engine is renowned worldwide for its reliability and economy; we have added solar panels on the roof of Red Moon to reduce our electrical energy carbon footprint. In addition, we can use our sails to improve performance and reduce diesel energy use. We carry a de- salinator which allows us to make our own water and avoid having to travel to find places to fill up - which are scarce in our cruising area. We have recently replaced our wet lead acid batteries with lithium batteries which are safer for our marine environment. The new batteries are much longer lasting and require lower energy maintenance.
We try to work with as many local businesses as we can, both for our food and drink supplies and any materials needed to maintain Red Moon. Local food suppliers are detailed on our food & drink page https://www.redmooncruises.co.uk/scottish-gourmet-food-cruises/. We have very little food wastage due to the creativity and skill of Red Moon's chef - and our enthusiastic guests and skipper !
We avoid single-use plastics, providing guests with re- usable water flasks in their cabins and have our own soda siphon for lovely chilled sparkling water. All waste packaging is retained onboard and recycled at the end of each cruise. Cleaning products we use have as low an environmental impact as possible.
We respect the fantastic and pristine environment we operate in - we encounter much marine and bird life during our cruises and we follow guidance on how to interact with them from Wild Scotland; we are an accredited WiSe marine operator (The UK National Training Scheme for minimising disturbance to marine wildlife). Similarly we are careful where we anchor and where we put guests ashore - to avoid disturbing the communities ( human, animal or plant) who live in the area, whilst also trying to provide support by highlighting local facilities, goods and services suppliers.
Our cruises are a good example of 'slow adventure' - we enable our guests to take an in depth look at one ( very fabulous) area of Scotland, rather than rushing about trying to 'tick off' places and we take 'the road less travelled'. We endeavour to follow the sustainable nature - based tourism policies set out in Wild Scotland's Best Practice Guidlines.
