Firstly, a short introduction. During the summer of 2018 I went on a trip to Snowdonia, located in the northwest of Wales where we took on a number of different activities as well as challenges. Snowdonia is known for Wales’ highest mountain, Snowdon, which offers beautiful views across the sea and spans many miles, which we had the opportunity of climbing as well as having the most perfect weather. Snowdonia is also home to an extensive network of trails, over a hundred lakes and peaks like Cader Idris and Tryfan. The question which I chose as my summer research question for NYAA was “How is the hostel sustainable to get rid of waste when it is in the middle of nowhere?”. This was definitely something that interested me as we stayed in the hostel for about half of the trip’s nights, and I often look into how the world is changing and developing in terms of creating more sustainable and ethical solutions for its many current problems, in this case having a viable way of getting rid of waste.

After asking the question and hearing an answer from the manager, I soon realised that their “good” and “sustainable” solution of disposing of rubbish was really nothing special, and definitely was not up to the standards as some places such as Singapore, as the local dump simply just picks it up and takes it back. However, after doing some research I found out that Wales is the fourth best country in the world at recycling, following Germany, Austria and South Korea at fifty two percent. Although the hostel is located in quite a discrete location, the general area has managed to do other things sustainably, for example generating electricity renewably, utilising a nearby mountain, now named Electric Mountain. Considering all of this, I do still personally feel that the Welsh government, as well as Snowdon’s local people and tourists could do more to increase this percentage.

Here I will be offering two in-depth solutions to how Snowdonia and Wales in general could increase its recycling percentage count. My first solution would be to have bins for different types of rubbish (paper, cans, general), as we often see here in Singapore. This helps us out as the rubbish can both be separated and recycled more easier and efficiently, as the plant will not have to do this work, allowing for things which have been through the cycle to be sold at possibly a reduced price as new ones will not have to be produced, wasting more energy. This perfectly leads into my second solution, which would be to have seperate bottle deposits, similar to the ones they have in countries such as Canada, Germany, as well as some states in America. These bottle deposits usually do not take up a lot of space and are sometimes placed in large buildings or shopping centres, and on top of that they give you some money back for returning them, motivating people to do so.