Sustainability at Jersey Zoo

Through our community fundraising project, Cans for Corridors, at Durrell we use money raised through recycling aluminium cans to help plant tree corridors, restoring links between fragments of degraded Brazilian rainforest. This forest is home to some of the most unique wildlife in the world, including the black lion tamarin, a species you can see at Jersey Zoo. 

Recycling 50 cans plants 1 tree in Brazil. 

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Rewild Carbon is our colourful and impactful climate solution, enabling us to balance our carbon and biodiversity impacts by reviving the Atlantic Forest through planting tree corridors and providing safe habitats for black lion tamarins (and many other species!). 

We have been measuring and compensating our scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions through our in-house nature-based climate solution Rewild Carbon. We have measured back to 2017 and are using 2022 as our baseline to measure and reduce our emissions from. 

We cannot continue business as usual and so are focusing on avoiding or reducing our emissions where possible. However, as we continue to work on this journey of decarbonisation, we will compensate our emissions through Rewild Carbon for those emissions that currently cannot be avoided.  

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‘Reuse, Recycle, Rewild’. 

Our charity shop offers Islanders a place to donate unwanted items to be resold and reused, keeping them in circulation, placing sustainability at its core, whilst raising vital funds to deliver Durrell’s conservation work. 

The charity shop is a low energy demand building, served by solar panels installed on the roof. This is reducing the environmental impact of not only the Charity Shop, but a number of Jersey Zoo’s buildings. 

We also offer our ‘Selected by Durrell’ range of new sustainability-related items in the Charity Shop, which are made from either recycled materials, to encourage sustainable living choices and nature connection.  

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Although Jersey is fortunate to have an electricity supply that is already low-carbon, it is important to recognise that it still has a carbon footprint. We are investing in a number of technologies to measure our energy consumption and in turn identify energy saving opportunities, as well as installing micro- generation renewable energy technologies, as outlined below.

Many of our buildings and animal enclosures were built in a way to reduce their ongoing waste in terms of energy, minimising their environmental impacts and running costs. 

Our bat house is a prime example of sustainable building practices, which we were awarded a Gold BIAZA Award for our exhibit. Sustainability, energy conservation and community involvement were key to the project.  

Constructed utilising old car tyres rammed full of earth as the building blocks, they are a perfect way to passively heat the building. Rammed earth tyres have a high thermal mass and so store heat during the day, and then release it overnight when the temperature falls.   

Sustainable travel is key to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. There are multiple green ways to get to Jersey Zoo! Together, we can create a healthier, wilder, more colourful world.  

Pack your headphones or a good book and enjoy the journey. The zoo is on three bus routes from Liberation Station in St Helier; the number 3, 13, and 23.  

Alternatively, put the pedal to the metal and cycle your way to the zoo! We have sheltered bike racks in our front car park.   

Hills are no problem with @evieondemand e-bikes!  

If travelling by EV, top up for the journey home with our on-site EV charging station.   

Waste is a key issue to tackle to achieve sustainable operations and minimise our environmental impact. This is particularly important within the context of being on an Island. Our geographic location offers an opportunity to expand principles of a circular economy and manage our waste more sustainably.  

We are striving to improve our waste management practices, practicing responsible consumption and production, to minimise the amount of waste produced. 

One example where we have adopted circular economy principles on site in though how we manage our site’s vegetation. Our composting machine creates fertiliser from site vegetation and animal waste, which is then used on our organic farm and back in our Zoo grounds. 

Our organic farm team are based behind the scenes at the zoo, using eco-friendly “no-dig” methods of farming to improve soil health and maintain growing all year round. Last year, the farm produced a fantastic 3,000kg of food. Most of the produce feeds the zoo’s animals, including some of the world’s most unique and endangered species.   

We grow a range of fruit and vegetables on the farm, in our 5 polytunnels, fruit cage and field depending on the season.  

During the winter months we have brassicas such as cabbages, Kale and sprouts growing in the field and less hardy greens such as lettuces and herbs in our polytunnels. 

In the summertime we move our lettuces outside and fill our polytunnels with tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and aubergines. Our top tunnel is filled with some of our more exotic flora such as giant Opuntia cactus, figs and goji. 

We have an internal Sustainability Action Group, which is a multi-departmental working group, consisting of a wide range of team members from all areas of the zoo site. The group meet regularly to discuss the following: 

- Share sustainability-related good practice at Jersey Zoo amongst the various departments  

- Highlight key areas where we could improve sustainability and generate action targets   

- Encourage greater interaction across the departments  

- Embed sustainability into all areas of the Zoo

Embedded sustainability into our operations includes how we deliver our events. We have made lots of improvements to make our events even greater through sustainable practices.  

As part of the Durrell Dash, we have switched t-shirts to planting trees for each runner, through Rewild Carbon, we’ve switched medals to wooden materials, bottles to canned water to be recycled with Cans for Corridors and orange slices to avoid unnecessary food packaging or waste.