Green and sustainable meetings
Sheffield has set an ambitious target of becoming a net zero carbon city by 2030. The Sheffield Convention Bureau is here to help your meeting run in a more sustainable way, achieve your green objectives and leave a positive legacy for your delegates and residents of the city.
Sheffield has a history of innovative and forward-thinking work on environmental issues
Sheffield has a history of innovative and forward-thinking work on environmental issues which stands us in good stead to scale up our ambition, from being the first city in the country to implement the Clean Air Act to our award-winning sustainable urban drainage scheme. Our internationally acclaimed Grey to Green scheme, now on its third phase, has improved the experience of walkers and cyclists, as well as businesses and residents in the areas around Kelham and Riverside and provides sustainable urban drainage as well as flood resistant planting for biodiversity.
District Heating Network: Sheffield was one of the first places in the UK to build a district heating network in the 1980s, and has supplied heat to over 2,800 homes and 140 public and private buildings. Its expansion will be a key part of our decarbonisation.
Sheffield is part of the UK100 Cities committed to taking climate action. We’re planting 100,000 trees over the next ten years to help achieve our vision to be a zero-carbon city by 2030.
And it’s not just our vision – rest assured that our venues have sustainability at the heart of every event.
Here are some of our venues green credentials:
The Leopold hotel (Green Tourism Silver) now stocks Drip Drop umbrellas! These umbrellas are eco-friendly and made from sustainable materials and for every umbrella rented they plant a tree in return!
In their first month 37 trees were planted from their guest’s contribution.
The hotel have also set up a scheme which offers guests a drink in lieu of their room been serviced daily to decrease their use of linen, chemicals and water. Cheers!
The University of Sheffield
The University of Sheffield, aims to be one of the most environmentally sustainable research intensive universities in the country, ensuring sustainability runs through everything it does: the education it provide for students; their world-class research and innovation; and their campus operations and local environment
Its most sustainable building was officially opened in November 2023. The Wave will operate with net zero emissions. Ground-source heat pumps will provide heating in the winter and cooling in summer, with solar panels being used to generate electricity for the building.
Wherever possible the university work with local suppliers. They are working with local milk provider Our Cow Molly and switching to milk churns over cartons to cut down on plastic waste.
The conference team work in collaboration with students at the University, supporting Save our Sandwiches where any surplus food from university events and meetings is redistributed to homeless charities to help those in need.
Community fridges are also in operation where unused food is placed into the fridges at two halls of residences and is freely available for students and members of the community to help themselves to. In the first three months of the fridge’s availability, they saved over five tonnes of food which would have otherwise been discarded.
The university are currently on track to reduce the number of single use cups on campus by over 100,000 this academic year through various initiatives.
Here's what our local event management company recommend
Our local event management company, Event Management Direct recommend using the following in your next event:
We would encourage the use of an event app where people can access their individual itinerary, sponsors info, delegate details etc on their phones, thus eliminating the need for printed literature and paper waste.
We use cardboard fully recyclable badges and the lanyards are collected at the end of each event and reused.
Where budgets allow, we encourage the use of electronic poster boards to stop the massive amount of paper and fabric waste which is produced at the end of an event who use printed posters.
There are other ways our venues are supporting sustainability across the city. We actively encourage them to contribute to Too Good to Go (https://www.toogoodtogo.com) and our local Food Works project (https://thefoodworks.org). Both organisations utilise over supply of food stocks and support local communities to access discounted and free meals and ingredients.
