Sustainability Made Easy
Finding sustainable venues for your client’s events can be hard work, but one way of making things easier is to not try to reinvent the wheel; there are now several ways that you can tap into the work of others to make finding sustainable venues a far easier process.
Checking the sustainability of a venue is easy if you look to see if they have a green accreditation. Accreditation offers you an effective way of tapping into someone else’s ‘recommendation’; it means that an independent third party has assessed a venue and rated all of the key areas of a venue’s operation and offering to see how they could be made more sustainable. An accreditation will also tell you if sustainability is important to a venue; do they have an accreditation, or are they working towards one? If they aren’t, then it may not even be on their agenda. Certain accreditations can also inform you as to how far along in their journey a venue is; many have different levels to achieve such as bronze, silver or gold, so ask your venue where they are and if they are happy and staying at that level, or what steps they are taking to achieve the next level. Accreditation gives you a framework in which to assess each venue you are considering and also enables you to compare venues.
There are a number of reputable green accreditation certification schemes who assess tourism and hospitality businesses – such as Green Tourism and Green Key. The mia (Meetings Industry Association) has just partnered with Green Tourism to introduce their Green Meetings Standard to mia members. This standard enables members to measure their performance against three pillars of caring for people, places and planet. The Venues Collection’s Sales Director Jo Austin heads up the sustainable committee for the mia and we are starting our journey to be Green Meetings accredited next month.
Another way of finding green venues is to use a venue finding website that has its own green criteria and ranks venues according to their own green check list. Hirespace has its Green Mark Accreditation Scheme whilst venuedirectory.com has introduced a function that allows a venue finder to search for a specific green accreditation, and to list green accredited venues at the top of search results.
When you have selected your short list, you can also drill down to see what each venue is offering by way of sustainable menus and packages. We have recently launched our Meetings for Change DDR and 24-hour rate packages which focus on the recently launched
Meetings for Change initiative – a five-point charter focussing on sustainable food options. They include ethically sourced tea and coffee served with Red Tractor Assured milk; buffet lunch, dinner and breakfast options that prioritise British seasonal ingredients, minimal food waste and plant-forward options; hydration stations that use fruit and vegetable peelings to flavour the water to remove single-use plastics and reduce food waste. We also have a sustainable approach to the use of stationary, ‘take what you like, but only take what you need’
Accreditation and other initiatives like this enable you to have confidence in the sustainable credentials of the venues you are selecting. Finding sustainable venues should not be hard if you tap into what’s already out there.
Talk to our sales team to discover more about what TVC is doing to ensure we offer a sustainable solution for your meetings and events. Contact the sales team on: enquiries@thevenuescollection.co.uk
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