What a day! Earlier this month, we welcomed over 100 attendees to our supplier conference, in what was our first ever sustainable event. Held at The LIFE Centre in Bradford, our suppliers joined us for a day of celebration, business updates and engagement opportunities.
The LIFE Centre was specifically chosen for our event due to its social value and its work with schools,
community centres and organisations within Bradford and West Yorkshire. Bradford of course is one of our owning authorities which was an important reason for choosing the location.
We worked with our event management company Legacy to deliver the day and set some sustainability objectives for the event including:
Energy and carbon
- Encouraged the use of the good transport links, with a free shuttle service offered from the train station to the venue
- Selected a local catering company that used electric vehicles to deliver the food to the venue
- Served primarily plant-based food
Materials and waste
- Used recycled paper lanyards and seed paper for name badges – to be taken home for planting
- Minimal single use plastic – where used, was recycled afterwards
- Sourced sustainable gifts – made from recyclable or biodegradable materials
- Primarily used digital signage
- Produced two new pop-up banners made form bamboo
- Minimised food waste through a serving station rather than finger buffet
Community
- Chose a venue that’s a charity and supports local community
- Set up a donation station for YPO suppliers to donate to the local community – we raised £1000 plus pledges for toys and stationery
We’ve received some fantastic feedback from suppliers:
“Loved the sustainability elements!!!”
“Fantastic to see the diversity of the panel as well as the sustainability emphasis”
“Great to feel part of such a dynamic group of people with a moral centre as its key purpose.”
“Happy 50th, great time to share info and updates”
“I think you did a great job of leading by example and being the beacon of good practice that we all aspire to be. Very useful content”
We also saw the highest level of engagement on social media, of any previous conference or exhibition, which resulted in a spike in organic growth with increased followers on LinkedIn. Our videos on TikTok and Instagram also performed really well.
Thank you to everyone who played a part in making this event possible and to our events partner Legacy who delivered over and above on our ambition to run a sustainable event.
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