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Brief 

As consumers increasingly seek out companies with the strongest sustainability credentials, it's vital that businesses act to become more environmentally friendly. 

CI Group brought together CEOs, managing directors and department heads from a range of industry-leading companies to share insights into how to tackle the ESG (environmental, social, and governance) for Climate Action at Kew Gardens. Attendees included Neeshe Williams, General Council and ESG officer of Pharmanovia, and Elaine Cook, UK Marketing Director at Intel. 

The event

The event was hosted by New York Time’s best-selling author, BBC journalist, documentary filmmaker and TV presenter Simon Reeve, an unconventional spokesperson on environmental issues, whose reach extends far beyond corporate social responsibility to fit with the theme to show how small actions can make an impact.

CI Group chose the Kew Gardens Nash Conservatory to host the event for its eco credentials and in partnership with Isla.

CEO of CI Group David Watt introduced CI Group’s Carbon Calculator to help businesses accurately estimate their total emissions, to provide vital insight into running Net Zero events, enabling organisations to calculate, offset and reduce their carbon footprint.  

Table decorations were created from wildflowers, an all-vegan menu was developed using  local suppliers and Kew Gardens provided their own speaker Simon Toomer, Curator of Living Collections, to speak about Kew’s sustainability credentials. With over 30,000 different species of plants, Kew’s living collection is the largest and most comprehensive in the world, making TW9 the world’s most plant bio-diverse postcode.

All event information was sent digitally running up to the event to reduce the carbon footprint, and the catering menus were printed on biodegradable paper that when planted grew into flowers. CI has already planted over 20,000 trees to offset travel carbon that could not be avoided.

Challenges

In terms of challenges, we wanted to ensure that delegates arriving at the venue did so by reducing their carbon footprint as much as possible. We encouraged guests to walk, cycle or, if travelling by car, share where possible and take public transport. The other challenge was ensuring we had a sustainable lunch menu, we asked that the venue use ingredients from locally sourced suppliers and we served a completely vegan menu. We also created a menu made from biodegradable paper that grew into flowers when printed.

Result 

Mark Wilkinson, BDM and Corporate Business Sustainability Lead, Easyjet said: “The event was so professionally run, the content was great and of course Simon Reeve had a great story and insights into his travels. Well done on making the event five times more sustainable than events have typically been in the past, and I really like the Carbon Calculator.” 

David Watt explained: “Sustainability has never been higher on the corporate agenda, and as organisations wake up to their environmental responsibility and what it means for their future, every business is viewed through a very different lens today.  

“As consumers increasingly seek out companies with the strongest sustainability credentials, it’s vital that businesses act to become more environmentally effective and accountable. CI Group and their carbon positive events provide many valuable insights and answers."