Get to know La calma, cultura i lleure, Star Awards winner 2019

Congratulations! Star Awards 2019 winner “Reducing the impacts on the environment”

“La calma, cultura i lleure“, which means “The calm, culture and leisure” in Catalan, is the EUROPARC Star Awards 2019 winner in the category of “Reducing the impacts on the environment“. They manage “El Bellver” a 100% energy efficient restaurant, which is a must when visiting El Montseny Natural Park and Biosphere Reserve. In this category, EUROPARC has evaluated the efficient ways undergone to reduce energy, waste, resources consumption in order to have a lighter impact on the environment.

Supporting the environment and the community

The restaurant is located in a big “Masía“, an old traditional country house, in the heart of Montseny Natural Park, and only reachable by foot. They also offer other services to the visitors and clients, for instance, they manage an interpretative museum about traditional knowledge where educative and guiding activities are organised. As an outstanding sustainable destination, they collaborate economically or by logistics with local farmers, companies and regional projects related to nature conservation to create a network that improves the situation of the Park.

The use of local products is the main company’s seal of identity. Around 80% of them come from the region or from Catalonia, including material used for business and management. Besides, almost half of them are ecologically produced, such as eggs, flour, dairy products, meat, fruits, and vegetables.

Furthermore, they manage their consumption carefully to avoid waste. By transporting all the products on their own, the use of unnecessary packaging is minimal. In the kitchen, the organic waste is composted of if possible, used to feed the animals. They also have a biologic depurative system for the grey waters, the process ends in a lagoon with vegetation and filtering gravel that treats the water and sends it back to the rivers.

The flavour of self-sufficiency

El Bellver count with systems and infrastructures that allows it to be 100% self-sufficient in terms of energy and water. Among those it can be found:

• Lightning and low consumption appliances
• Solar panels
• Energy Accumulation Batteries
• Movement sensors
• Inverted gasification biomass boiler with a thermal buffer tank

We don’t need to be connected to the electric service, so we don’t pay any bill

Thanks to the presence of a mine underground, a supply of water filtered by the grasslands and pastures of Montsenty mountain massive is always available. To make the most of it, they recycle the water used in the kitchen if possible for the orchard. They even use the water of the rooftop for cleaning. Other measures are:

• Water’saving measures in the bathrooms
• Informative panels for the clients

An online public voting is now running, to select one winner out of the five awarded, who will be invited to present their business at EUROPARC Conference 2020. VOTE NOW!