Building a Greener Future: Our Commitment to a Sustainable Venue
Our latest blog highlights our commitment to maintaining a sustainable venue and the ways we are working to ensure sustainability across all areas.
Saving energy, reducing your carbon footprint and living a more sustainable lifestyle are hot topics, not just within our industry but globally. Events have always carried a large footprint with them, from national and international travel, single-use plastic waste, huge energy consumption with visual and lighting productions, and expendable event branded sets, etc.
Since our doors opened in 2014, we have been passionate about ensuring that our footprint is kept to a minimum and as Event Planners, to is our role also to help our lovely clients do the same. As part of our accreditation process for the Green Meetings standards, we have identified five sustainability pledges. These pledges highlight areas where we want to improve what we do, how we operate and what we deliver:
- Supporting our clients’ sustainability goals
- Sustainable stationery policy
- Sustainable cleaning strategy
- Guaranteed product repurposing options
- Green Meetings accreditation
We recently shared a blog where we went into more detail about our five sustainability pledges, which you can read more about here.
Below, we go into more detail about what we’re doing as a venue to ensure we’re sustainable across all areas:
Transportation
Say goodbye to the stress of driving into a city and take advantage of Leeds’ fantastic public transport, whether that be train, bus, park and ride or even the Leeds Dock water taxi!
Check out our how-to video, which guides you on a seven-minute walk from Leeds train station to Horizon Leeds, ensuring you see some of the beautiful sites Leeds has to offer.
Did you know we are less than 2 and a half hours away from London with a direct LNER train? Conference Leeds is pleased to have confirmed a conference bureau partnership with LNER for 2025. This partnership includes a conference delegate rail promotional code available to event organisers holding events in Leeds.
The discount is 25% off rail fares and covers all LNER stations from Edinburgh through to London, and is valid for delegates travelling to and from Leeds.
For more information on how you can use and share the code for your next Leeds event, please get in touch with the Sales team: sales@horizonleeds.co.uk.
Alternately, why not use the commute as part of your daily exercise and cycle in? With secure cycle storage and showers onsite, this also provides another great option for delegates.
All transportation details are shared with our clients in pre-event information packs and via our website to ensure that their delegates have all the information they need ahead of their visit.
Utilities
As an award-winning, digitally led conference centre, power is a necessity, but how do we ensure that we provide our facilities in the greenest way?
We are proud to use 100% renewable energy and are always looking at ways to reduce the venue’s energy consumption, whether this be ensuring that all technology, heating and coffee machines are switched off when not in use, prompting organisers to keep windows closed when using air conditioning and switching off tech during breaks.
All lighting in the venue is LED, and where possible, areas are motion sensor controlled, ensuring lighting is only on when required. This has made a huge difference to the energy consumption within the venue. Find out more here.
Waste Management
It’s no secret that events create waste, and here at Horizon Leeds, it is no different, so we have spent a lot of time, along with our suppliers to look at our waste processes and seeing where this can be reduced.
The venue aims to achieve a ‘zero to landfill’ approach for all waste management. All general waste (everything which can’t be recycled) is sent off to be made into energy. The process is called refuse-derived fuel. Not only does it save on landfill, but it also reduces carbon emissions.
Recycling is always the aim. There are easy wins like ensuring single-use plastics are kept to a minimum and replacing them with compostable alternatives, and even better reusable items such as coffee cups, crockery and utensils. We encourage clients to think about what items they use for their events to ensure,e where possible, they are recyclable. We help them with this by providing sustainable stationery and encouraging the use of tech and whiteboards rather than flipchart paper.
Having this conversation with our clients and building it into our event strategy is a great way of ensuring delegate awareness. For example, one of our regular clients’ internal environmental group has an event ‘bin team’ who will collect biscuit packets and take them back to the office to add to their recycle scheme, as well as coffee grounds and tea bags for their office compost heap. The delegates are fully engaged, and many have then carried this on in their own homes.
Cleaning
Making a greener choice with our cleaning supplies is a great example of how working with suppliers can have a positive impact on the environment.
Our cleaning team is committed to using chemical-free and sustainable cleaning products as often as possible. Making the switch to Odorbac Tec, which is 100% Organic, 4 years ago has been brilliant. Odorbac is non-hazardous, non-irritating, noncarcinogenic, environmentally friendly, and fully biodegradable. Tested to BS EN 1276 and BS EN 14476 protocols, it provides peace of mind knowing we are keeping nasties out of our water.
Talking of water, we try to keep our laundry use to a minimum by having modern tables which don’t require tablecloths. This is a huge saving in our water consumption.
Catering
Sustainable catering is probably one of the things our clients most ask for, and as we all know,w food is the way to a delegate’s hear,t so what do we do here at Horizon Leeds to ensure we are thinking and eating green
Our wonderful caterers, Catering Yorkshire, who are based ten minutes down the road from the venue, ensure that the ingredients they use are both locally sourced but also seasonal. This is why, if a client asks to make their menu choices 6 months before their event, we have to politely say no as we change our menus seasonally. Of course, we can give examples of the menus, but creating new menus seasonally is great for the environment, but also ensures we are up to date with food trends.
All our menus include vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free options, but we are finding there is a definite trend towards a full vegan menu, including the milk in the coffee machines, and of course, we can cater for this! The vegan chocolate mouse is a firm favourite with the team!
Food wastage, unfortunately, is inevitable; however, at Horizon Leeds, we work with local homeless charities to keep this to a minimum by donating any leftover food.
Now on to the drinks, Fairtrade coffee and traceable supply chain with SCA Green Professional Certification and UTZ certified is a standard here at Horizon Leeds, and microplastics in tea bags is a definite no no.
Did you know that the venue operates a water purification system on-site to eliminate unnecessary water bottle usage, transportation and waste? This ensures you have refreshing, cold sparkling and still water on tap all day with no plastic bottles in sight!
Technology
We touched on technology regarding power, but did you know technology can be a way of making an event more green if used in the correct way?
Yes, there are simple things like using digital signage rather than paper signs or ensuring that all contracts and electronic documents to minimise the mountains of paperwork, but at Horizon Leeds we have gone a step further….
Our Broadcast Studio enables clients to provide comms and training to remote delegates worldwide. Imagine a TV studio set up which can be fully branded, where up to four speakers can connect with delegates across the world at the same time. An inclusive, cost-effective option which enables international communications with minimal travel.
If an in-person event is what you are looking for, then we can provide in-house AV including screens, projectors, cameras and microphones, to minimise the movement of equipment. We regularly integrate hybrid elements into our face-to-face conference to ensure they are fully accessible.
Horizon Leeds
Find out more about our sustainability values here. Our commitment to improving our sustainability also means we can support your CSR goals. We’d love to talk to you about your sustainability ambitions and how our values can support yours.
Our passion for ensuring sustainability is at the forefront of all we do is being recognised externally. We are extremely proud to have been chosen to be the venue partner for the Yorkshire Events Sustainability Summit (YESS). YESS is a unique, industry-driven event aimed at making Yorkshire the most sustainable events hub in the UK. Find out more here.
