Can you believe it has been a YEAR since we were in Glasgow for COP 26?
No, we cannot either!
This time last year, Celia and Charlotte had just got back from spending 3 days in Glasgow, where we asked to exhibit at a fringe event in the city, hosted by UK Hospitality.
It was incredible to be surrounded by all these massive companies, and hearing how their stories.
For anyone who has been living under a bit of a rock, the COP summits stand for Conference of the Parties, and include representatives from countries around the world to come together and create strategies to reduce emissions, on other measures to reduce the impact of climate change.
Every year, a pact is written with a set of targets for each country to achieve.
So yeah, it is kind of a big deal. And going to be a part of it in some small way was insane.
With the current COP 27 conference taking place in Egypt, we’re looking back over the last year we had and our progress.
So, one big thing that happened in the last 12 months that we may or may not have mentioned: we became the first ever wedding and events venue in the UK to get the B Corp certification.
This is definitely a HUGE deal – to get the B Corp certificate, it required lots of evidence submitted on all areas of our business, from environmental practices, to staff wages and wellbeing, to what we offer the local community.
We announced we had become a B Corp at our Business as a Power for Good event in March, which brought together businesses, leaders and experts from across Lancashire and the Greater Manchester region, to hear stories, get inspired, make connections, and strategize for a more sustainable North West. We’re excited to say that we will be repeating the even on 16th March 2023, with more details to come soon.
On our submission, we received a score of over 97 – and to keep the B Corp label, we need to get higher on our next assessment.
So it only gets tougher, and we will never stop thinking what else we can do.
While our B Corp assessment may the main thing we have been shouting from the rooftops about since March, it’s not the only certification we’ve won in 2022: in February, we won the Ethical and Sustainable Tourism award at the Lancashire Tourism Awards, and just a couple of weeks ago, we were awarded as Highly Commended for Environmental Business at the Hive Awards, celebrating the best businesses in Blackburn.
But we don’t think it is just awards we need to be celebrating. One thing we pride ourselves on is offering our staff access to a wide range of courses for their personal development. The one we have just heard from this week, was the Carbon Literacy Project; as our Senior Team all completed and passed a Carbon Literacy Course from Better Not Stop, who also helped us a lot get the B Corp certificate.
It was so inspiring and eye opening to know not just the picture that the climate is in, but also of our own carbon footprints, both on an individual level, and as an organisation; as well as identifying on we can improve on both levels too.
In a way, we created our own COP pacts.
Problems related to climate are not easy to solve. The fact COP exists is proof of that fact. But what we’ve learnt this year is that a) hard work pays off, and b) it is the smaller changes that can often make the biggest difference.
