The British Motor Museum is committed to continually improving its environmental performance and is working hard towards a more sustainable future. Our Silver ECOsmart accreditation adds credibility to our sustainability initiatives so far. It is awarded to venues who have taken steps to achieve a wide range of eco-focussed actions and can demonstrate an eco-friendly service approach in five key areas: Energy & Water Conservation, Waste Management & Recycling, Rooms & Facilities, Food & Beverage and Corporate & Social Responsibility.

‘Silver' status by Greengage ECOsmart, the accreditation programme which recognises and supports eco-friendly hotels and conference venues that meet certified standards of sustainability. Silver status is awarded to venues who have taken steps to achieve a wide range of eco-focussed actions and can demonstrate an eco-friendly service approach in five key areas: Energy & Water Conservation, Waste Management & Recycling, Rooms & Facilities, Food & Beverage and Corporate & Social Responsibility.

We have also achieved our Bronze Green Meetings Award. This is awarded by Green Tourism, an organisation with 25 years of experience assessing businesses in the tourism sector based on their sustainability practices. The Green Meetings award applies these criteria to meetings and events venues, and examines them based on three key factors: People Goals, Places Goals and Planet Goals. Bronze status is awarded to businesses that can demonstrate a strong commitment to good eco-friendly practices across all their activities.

So here is what we are already doing to make our venue and your meetings greener.....

Energy Consumption

• Installed a building management system that automatically optimises the heating and air conditioning and we closely monitor our energy use
• Installed LED lighting throughout the building with motion-sensitive lighting in appropriate areas as well as day light timers for external lighting
• Installed low energy hand dryers
• The main kitchen was recently refitted with state-of-the-art low energy consumption ovens and refrigeration equipment
• Installed 10 dedicated electric vehicle charging points and the infrastructure to support others for client's events
• Installed solar PV array panels on the Collections Centre roof, which supplies power to this already very low energy usage building

Water Management

• To reduce water use we have installed dual flush toilets, waterless urinals and sensor taps
• Monitor water usage on a monthly basis
• An in-house bottling plant has been installed to provide sparkling and still filtered table water utilising reusable glass bottles. This process removes transportation and waste from the provision of table water.
• The sedum roof area on our Collections building slows down roof runoff
• The lakes and ponds on site are designed to act as holding tanks to collect rainwater and slowly release into the watercourse to avoid flash flooding downstream

Waste Management - Zero Waste to Landfill

This has been achieved by;

• Recycling 100% of paper, card, glass, cans and plastic waste
• All food waste is collected and sent for recycling
• Our used cooking oil is recycled into biofuel
• 80%+ of single-use plastic has now been eliminated. Replacing plastic bottled drinks for cans, in the Cafe reduced our plastic usage by 1.21 tons (46, 644 bottles) in the first 12 months
• Café packaging for sandwiches etc. has been replaced with compostable packaging, and wherever possible china coffee mugs are used in place of disposable /compostable mugs
• We compost waste from garden areas
• Bins for recyclable materials are available in all public spaces and meeting rooms
• Dispensing of soaps in bulk or recyclable / refillable containers
• Chemical cleaning products replaced with bulk eco-friendly products
• Toilet tissue - made from recycled material
• Replaced personal printers with centralised printers with double-side facility
• Replaced most paper signage with digital / electronic signage in the meetings and conference areas
• To help reduce paper waste, flip charts and conference pads are only available on request
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Supply chain improvements

• British Motor Museum is undertaking initiatives to reduce food miles
• All coffee used at the Museum is Fair Trade, our supplier Paddy & Scotts runs a Community Wellbeing Initiative in Kenya and our coffee sales to date have resulted in BMM contributing the equivalent of 1688 school meals along with 2.8% of the capex required for the new roof and windows at the Ruiga School in Kenya.
• Vegan menu options as well as soya milk offered as an alternative to dairy
• We were the first conference venue in the UK to receive the gluten free accreditation from Coeliac UK
• We have sourced a new supplier for delegate paper pads and pens so they are now made from recycled materials
  
  

The Museum and the local community

The centre employs around 100 staff, most of whom are drawn from the local community. Wherever possible the British Motor Museum assists the local community – for example we;

• Offer volunteer opportunities, with a team of over 70 volunteers regularly supporting the Museum’s work
• Run a community outreach programme to take the Museum to those that can’t make a physical visit to the Museum, such as older people, those with additional needs or groups for whom transport costs are a barrier to visiting.
• Assist local charitable and community events with the loan of historic vehicles from the Trust’s collection, hospitality equipment and the donation of prizes etc
• Host quarterly community liaison meetings for local parish councils and representative bodies
• During COVID our Communities team put together fun educational activity packs for children whilst not at school to undertake - this was distributed out to children via the local food bank.
• We also developed digital content delivering live digital tours of the museum as far field as New Zealand and Japan!
• As home to the world's largest collection of historic British cars, the British Motor Museum is an independent Museum and registered charity which receives no central government funding. All profits generated from the Museum’s commercial activities are donated directly to the Trust. Companies choosing to use the conference facilities are, therefore, contributing directly to the sustainability of the Trust and its aims which include inspiring future generations of designers and engineers.

Moving forward … the future

We are proud to say that we are not resting on our laurels but striving forward to improve our sustainability. Sustainability is not a buzz-word, it is here to stay now more than ever and we hope to create a culture of conscience in what we do and how we do it. It must be a team effort and we look forward to working closely with both clients and suppliers to make better choices to benefit future generations.

• Green targets will form an integral part of our strategy for 2022-2026
• We are developing a team of sustainability champions from right across the business who own the challenges of finding new ways to make our operations more sustainable and implementing them
• We are developing a set of KPIs to further reduce waste and energy consumption, as well as conserve and reduce water consumption and responsibly source other consumable items
• We are going for Gold! We hope that in the next few years we will be able to achieve the ECOsmart gold accreditation and are looking into other ‘Green’ accreditations to support the work we do
• Alongside all past automotive technology and innovation we will also develop a permanent exhibition of future technologies and showcase the green personal transport systems to come

For our full CSR policy take a look here

For our full Environment policy click here