Warm hospitality, cool rooms via solarpowered electricity:
all part of the plan to make the Watermill Green

In the last four years our hidden array of photovoltaic panels has produced more than 60 megawatt hours (MWh = 60,000 KwH, kilowatt hours) of electricity from the sun and saved the emission of 43 tonnes of carbon dioxide from conventional power stations. It may not be much in the grand scheme of things but, as they say, every little helps, and it means, as you will see below, our guests are Cool and Green when they stay with us.

A ‘snapshot’ of our production of electricity from the sun, taken on the morning of 21 August 2023. And here (right) is a close-up:

You will have to search hard to see our photovoltaic panels, which are on the southfacing roofs of the 19th century mill and on the studio, looking out towards the river. You can really only see them from the air (right).

These photovoltaic panels, which we installed in 2019, make us more than selfsufficient in electricity production. (In fact, we sell the surplus we produce to the Italian national grid.)

This solar electricity not only supplies our everyday needs, but also powers our extensive air-conditioning system, so apart from regular maintenance, it effectively costs nothing to run. There are air-conditioning units in all our bedrooms and public rooms, including the communal dining room, sitting room and the studio, all run with solar-powered electricity, which is why we say you will be Cool and Green!

Another Green and Cool initiative from the Watermill:
How our guests will stop 40,000 used plastic bottles from reaching the ocean each year

Our daughter Lydia
has her own Ocean Bottle, too.

It’s all part of the Watermill’s endeavour to be even Greener (and cool, too, if that’s the way you like your water).

In a fantastic deal with Ocean Bottle* we’ve financed a scheme to collect each year 450 kgs of ocean-bound plastic from the world’s most polluted rivers and waterways and ensure that it is not dumped into the sea. This is equivalent to around 40,000 half-litre plastic bottles. It will make us ‘plastic neutral’ each year.

Plastic waste is the scourge of the oceans and their wildlife, and a couple of years ago we made a start in reducing our ‘plastic footprint’ by no longer buying water in plastic bottles. Instead, we invested in a clever water dispenser which produces filtered water at ambient temperature, cold and still, or cold and fizzy) for all our meals and for guests to use in the Ocean Bottle insulated flasks we will loan them during their week with us.

Picture: Imperial College, London

* Ocean Bottle, a British company, works worldwide to bring a ‘people-powered solution to the ocean plastic crisis.’ Through the sales of its recyclable insulated bottles, it raises money to pay people to collect plastic in coastal communities where plastic pollution is worst

The company guarantees this collection through regulated waste-management tracking and verification. The plastic collected is recycled, upcycled or reprocessed and this is also monitored. Moreover, the company works with local collectors, who exchange plastic for money, helping them to be more secure financially and to gain access to social resources such as healthcare and education.

Since launching in 2019 Ocean Bottle has prevented more than seven million kgs of ocean-bound plastic from reaching our seas. That’s equivalent to 636 million plastic bottles.

A rough estimate of the amount of plastic used at the Watermill during our creative weeks is around 450kgs, or about 1.8 kgs per guest. Working with the Ocean Bottle company, we have done a deal both to buy their beautiful, insulated bottles and to pay into a scheme to ensure that all our plastic use is offset each year. In this way, our creative-course guests will know that they are plastic neutral during their weeks with us.

Currently eight million metric tonnes (8,000 million kgs) of plastic winds up in the oceans every year. Our contribution may be a drop in the ocean (sorry about that!), but it’s important, nonetheless.

We are surrounded by not one, but two, environmentally protected areas

To enjoy our other environmental efforts, you won’t have to lift a finger! Just lean back in your chair on the vine verandah and contemplate the fact that we are surrounded by two environmentally protected areas: the National Park of the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines and the Regional Park of the Apuan Alps. The air and the water are pure and unpolluted, and the area abounds in wildlife.

In the Watermill grounds we have red deer, fallow deer, wild pigs, porcupines, badgers, foxes, squirrels, beach martens and we are sure one or two others we have forgotten. We don’t see much of them, but our gardener Flavio Terenzoni, has captured them with his night-vision video camera, like this cheeky fox, who obviously thinks he owns the place.

We have birds, too, of course. In fact, the spring Dawn Chorus at 5:30 in the morning is rather deafening. And in the summer, the swifts, having completed a 3000-mile journey from Africa, swoop and shriek over the courtyard and garden. Equally noisy are the cicadas, flexing their muscles to make the distinctive sound that announces their presence. Quieter species include the beautiful swallowtail butterfly and the remarkable hummingbird moth, with its long proboscis to seek for nectar.

Pictures: Lara Breckon and Ron Ploeg

All this surrounds you every day as you develop your creativity on a Watermill course, with inspirational teaching, warm hospitality, delicious food and wine, excursions to spectacular settings and the surrounding unspoiled Tuscan countryside – and, of course , the convivial company of like-minded creative people.

suggestions for activities and excursions for them too. But they may care to contemplate the wonders of nature while reading a book on one of the sun loungers in the walled garden. It’s a hard life!

Be cool – and Silvery blue – in the Watermill’s historic plunge pool

This year we are also working on a new project (or rather the rejuvenation of an old one) in the Watermill’s ‘plunge pool’.

This is actually the small reservoir from the frantoio, the olive press, into which, in the old days a mixture of olive oil and water poured after the fruit was pressed, allowing olive oil to be skimmed off the surface. We painted the sides of the reservoir and attractive silvery grey and in the early years of our ownership of the Watermill we used to fill it with cold water from the millstream. Our girls, and our guests, enjoyed chilling out there. The problem was that it was difficult to filter out the particles of sandstone eroded from the Apennines and transported down the river Rosaro. The floor and sides of the plunge pool soon became coated with unsightly silt, so every few months we had to empty it and start again. There was also the problem of getting in and out, you and most of our older guests simply dangled their feet.

Our next project is to solve the filtration problem, put in some steps down and tidy up the edges, to make a real feature of the plunge pool. We think we will keep the same colour, so as well as being Cool and Green, you will also be Cool and Silveryblue!