Sustainability

Minimising the environmental impact of Drapers Inner Circle Summit is important to us.

As part of our commitment to a more sustainable future, we are taking practical steps to reduce and offset our carbon emissions, and we encourage our event partners to do the same.

Below are some of the measures we are implementing to reduce waste and energy consumption, and to minimise the carbon footprint of the event:

OUR EVENT ATTENDEES

SWAG Is it valuable to the attendee? We ask to keep this to a minimum with the aim of using sustainable, recyclable or compostable materials.

NO SINGLE-USE BOTTLES We provide water stations and encourage attendees to bring their own reusable drinking bottles.

GETTING TO OUR EVENTS Directions for public transport only are detailed on the event website.

OUR EVENT VENUE

The Ham Yard Hotel’s statement on sustainability:

Our food is sourced on flavour, and during the summer months 80% of our fruit and vegetables are sourced from the UK. We try to use UK produce as much as we can across the Firmdale Group. As we make everything in house, we are lucky that we can do this and pick the best produce. For example, our milk is from a small farm in Lancashire and has a higher selenium content, all of our eggs are organic, 70% of our fish is caught of the south coast, meat is farmed in small parts of the West Country, Ireland and Scotland. Chickens are “nature and respect” standard. Our group executive head chef personally visits all of our suppliers throughout the year to check on all aspects from farming practices to asparagus fields and dry store units. We do make sure all the produce and companies that supply us are all of the same standard.

We use the rooftop garden produce, mainly in the restaurant at Ham Yard Hotel as the specials and menu consume most of what we produce. The events kitchen is run slightly different as we take pre-orders further in advance, with clients wanting the same menus year on year. That said, all the food we purchase across the group is held to the same standards. Our bees produce honey and we have a herb garden on the rooftop which also supplies the hotel.

Ham Yard Hotel is awarded the BREEAM “excellent” rating. BREEAM is a methodology to assess the sustainability and environmental performance of buildings and it was launched by BRE in 1990. BREEAM is one of the first sustainability assessment tools established in the world and it was later used as a basis for LEED green building certification programme. BREEAM reviews building performance in different categories and compares them with the established benchmarks. Ham Yard Hotel has an “excellent” energy performance rating, which exceeds the standards of its time by more than 40%.

OUR EVENT SUPPLIERS

Drapers chooses its suppliers with a bias towards those partners who take sustainability seriously.

EVENT COLLATERAL, SIGNAGE AND EXHIBITION STANDS

Our event guide programmes and tickets are electronic instead of printed. The signage we use is from Insite Graphics, which holds ISO14001 certification. Event signage is all either recyclable, reusable or used to provide community power at end of life – none will go to landfill. All the ink is water based and much of our signage is moving to carboard-based alternatives, recyclable in generic paper waste collections. For more information click here.

AV SUPPLIER We have chosen our AV supplier based on its positive sustainability policy, which you can read here.

COURIERS We request electric vehicles for our preferred courier, Santis Global. For more information click here.

TRANSPORT Employees are encouraged to take public transport to event or to travel using our Uber Green company account. For more information click here.

TROPHY SUPPLIER Gaudio, our trophy supplier, plants a tree for every order made.

LANYARDS Where possible, we source lanyards that are made from sustainable materials such as bamboo, and we aim for these to be returned, disinfected and reused.

WE NEED TO WORK HARDER

This section of the website is not just dedicated to shouting about how great we are for doing what we should have been doing all along. We need to do better. We would love to hear from you on how you think we could improve. Please email any suggestions to innercircle.drapers@emap.com or take a few moments to complete the post-event survey that will be emailed to you after the summit.