Sustainability is a real hot topic at the moment,

With more of us aware of how our actions affect the planet now than ever before!

We’re all doing our best to ensure that the way we live our lives is as kind to the world around us as possible. As part of this new movement in sustainability, brands and businesses are being asked and encouraged to do their bit to reduce the impact humans have on the planet and, as always, Smart Group are trying to be at the forefront of this.

So, how are Smart Group helping you party more sustainably?

Relying on British Suppliers

There’s a huge environmental impact caused by the amount of travel involved with transporting our food around the globe, so we’re doing our bit to source all of our ingredients from local, British suppliers to reduce food miles.

Sticking as close to our base in London as we can, many of our products come from suppliers based in the City, including our herbs, cheeses, dairy, eggs and our bean sprouts. We only have to travel a little further afield to Kent for fruit and frozen goods, and Essex for our potatoes.

Our meat is sourced from Coventry and our seafood from New Covent Garden. By relying on British suppliers as much as we do, we can cut down on the amount of damaging air emissions that are released from transporting produce.

Reusable and Recyclable Water Bottles

As for our bars, we’ve replaced our regular bottles of water with Harrogate due to their new 100% recyclable packaging, allowing you to use disposable water bottles with less of an impact to the environment. These revolutionary bottles are manufactured from 50% Virgin PET, a fully recyclable material, and rPET, which can be super-cleaned to create a multi-use and multi-reuse plastic from both post-consumer waste and post-industrial waste. To find out more about these bottles, click here.

Boycotting Polystyrene Packaging

We’re working with our suppliers to not just look at where our produce is coming from but how it is packaged too. We’ve completely stopped using produce that is packaged with polystyrene, and we’re in constant conversation with our suppliers to ensure reusable packaging is used where possible, and if it can’t be reused, that it is compostable, biodegradable and eco-friendly.

Green Smarties

We don’t just focus on hosting events sustainably but also encourage our staff to take responsibility for their own environmental impact too. Here are just a few examples of how staff are putting our internal initiative, Green Smarties, into place:

The Green Smartie Brigade – As part of our corporate social responsibility campaign, we created the Green Smartie Brigade, which is made up of 10 members from different divisions of the company. The group meet on a regular basis to discuss how we shape our CSR activities both in the office and at events, ensuring we work Smarter in relation to our environment in the future.
Cycle2Work scheme – This encourages members of the Smart Group family to ditch their cars and break out their bikes to make their way into work. Central London is getting seriously polluted with vehicles and can be busy to travel by car, so swapping to cycling can save time, money and the planet!

Litter picking – Last week, employees all across Smart Group went litter picking around Battersea Park as part of our sustainability initiative (pictured above).
Reusable water bottles – We’ve replaced all our regular bottles in our offices with reusables ones, so that our staff can refill them using one of the taps around the office and take onsite to events.
Centralised recycling stations – We also operate a strict recycling initiative whereby a centralised recycling station with three separate bins for paper, mixed recycling and general waste, are placed in each of our offices.

So, as well as making the smaller changes such as paper straws and eco-friendly tableware, we’re trying to look at the bigger picture to make our offices and events as sustainable and environmentally considerate as possible!

How Smart Group Are Making Events More Sustainable