Time for Nature this World Environment Day

At the NEC Group, we understand the importance of our impact on the environment and the community around us and know it’s also important to our customers that we’re all doing our bit.  Therefore, everything we do is underpinned by the fact that we’re responsible, fair and honest. 

Whilst our venues aren’t open this World Environment Day, we are still proud to have supported environmental causes for many years.  We welcome millions of visitors through our doors every single year, meaning we get through a fair bit of a waste from leftover food, packaging and rubbish which comes with putting on live events.  For over a decade we’ve gone above and beyond the standard to mitigate this, looking at ways to make positive change through our all-encompassing sustainability programme. 

Committed to ensuring that through the work and events we deliver, we are as sustainable as possible, categorising our environmental efforts into three key workstreams; energy, waste and food.

Energy 

Technology is key to helping us reduce energy usage.  By getting smarter with systems, we now have smart meters and inverters – allowing us to track day to day energy usage.  Energy efficient LEDs are now installed across our venues; in Mall, Halls and footpaths and many of these automatically come on/off with movement sensors.  At the NEC venue, the exterior lighting is now also set according to daylight saving, ensuring we follow the seasons and don’t waste energy by having them on during the day.  

Waste

We are proud that the NEC Group operates on a zero to landfill basis, with an average recycle rate of 80% - some of the best waste statistics in the business.

Our policy is that waste should not travel more than 30 miles from site, to minimise carbon emissions and support local businesses. 

Food

Our award-winning catering company, Amadeus, works closely with all the NEC Group businesses to ensure the best food provenance for our customers.  Through this, we’ve committed to supporting local communities; 60% of our food and beverage suppliers are small and medium sized enterprises and 80% of our food and beverage suppliers can be found within a 30-mile radius of our venues.  

We can also boast that 100% of Amadeus’ disposable packaging spend is on sustainable products.  Reusable cups are sold at a number of our retail outlets and we give discounts to customers that present their own.  

However, that’s just a fraction of what we do the whole year through. For many more examples of what we’ve been up to, take a look at a couple of our websites:  The NEC and Amadeus food.