BEACONHOUSE EVENTS, a leading events company headquartered in Newcastle upon Tyne, is partnering with an environmental charity here in the North East to ethically offset its carbon impact as a business and drive industry-wide change.
The award-winning event agency, which launched its five-year ESG strategy in early 2023, has opted to donate the carbon credit equivalent to local community and environmental charity, Groundwork NE & Cumbria. The donation will go towards supporting the charity in delivering its nature-based Solutions portfolio of environmental community initiatives, including the continuation of the Revitalising our Estuaries, (RoE), a pioneering programme of river estuary restoration across the North East.
BeaconHouse Events ESG strategy aims to address two key pillars in the coming years when it comes to reducing carbon; internal emissions and event carbon, the latter of which covers the emissions from client events delivered by the agency, the majority of which comes from travel.
Sarah Thackray, co-founder and director of BeaconHouse Events, said: “We thought long and hard as a team about whether we wanted to offset our carbon impact as a business and ultimately, we wanted to give back ethically to communities in our immediate vicinity here in the North East, rather than opting to plant trees or support projects overseas.
“We have committed to donate the company’s annual carbon footprint offset equivalent each year to a regional charity, which in 2022 was approx. 7.5 tonnes. We are aiming to decrease carbon emissions by 5 percent year on year by taking steps including moving to a new office space to lower our heating bills, looking at energy consumption, and sustainably sourcing materials. However, we recognise that the event industry has a major impact on our planet, and our internal carbon emissions as a business only accounts for a small proportion of our yearly total, the rest is generated from the client events we deliver. It is our job to lead change within our sector and model what is possible for other event agencies and rather than handing over responsibility to our clients, we are working with them to make consistent, considered changes together.
“90 percent of event carbon comes from audience travel and we want to take some accountability for the carbon impact that our events generate. Therefore, we have also committed to offset the remaining 10 percent of event carbon (equating to approx. 31.6 tonnes for all major events delivered in the 2022-2023 financial year) and donate the carbon credit equivalent to bolster our donation to Groundwork NE & Cumbria’s Nature-based solutions programme. We believe it is our responsibility to support our clients and their delegates to make better choices about travel and think about how they can safely take actions like car sharing or sustainable travel, we will then work with clients to help them understand and choose solutions to reduce their travel emissions. This could include using apps like ‘TripShift’ which tracks individuals’ movements, and how you are travelling, and uses this vital data to understand behaviours and patterns of travel to support a change to more sustainable mobility, implement positive strategies to reduce emissions, and offset individual’s impact.
“By collaborating with our clients, delegates, and other event professionals we can make consistent, real change as a sector, rather than passing the carbon buck on to the businesses we work with, many of whom are right at the start of their ESG journey or are simply overwhelmed with the options available to make strategic change. Everything that we have planned works in tandem with our growth plans for the coming years and allows us to support our clients to achieve both their business ambitions while supporting them to reach their own ESG goals too.”
Steven Roberts, Chief Executive of Groundwork NE & Cumbria, said:
“BeaconHouse Events are showing how any business, big or small, can play a part in helping to tackle the environmental challenges we all face. I really am moved by their generosity and their genuine interest in Groundwork’s pioneering work around Nature-based Solutions and biodiversity net gain. Their contribution will help us continue our work to revitalise estuaries across the region which has already had notable success in conserving and restoring eco-systems. Their support is a great example of partnership in action and we hope it will be the start of a long and productive relationship, as well as encouraging other organisations to follow suit! Any organisation looking to build, or enhance their corporate environmental and sustainability strategies, can explore working with us through our new investor portfolio. Together we can make a difference.”
BeaconHouse Events were early adopters of TRACE, a digital carbon measurement platform designed to allow the event industry to reach Net Zero. TRACE helps the team to gather data on their internal carbon impact and the impact of each client event, which in turn gives them the ability to work with clients to benchmark and track success.
Alongside the environmental commitments, the business’s ESG strategy also outlines plans to track ESG activity via timesheets and donate the equivalent amount of time or in-kind support to local community groups supporting health and wellbeing, quality education, and economic growth.
For more information on BeaconHouse Events visit www.beaconhouse-events.co.uk