“ It ’ s amazing to see the buy-in from board level all the way through to the people on the ground .”
AUTUMN | FEATURE
Making AEG more sustainable
In January , AEG Europe hired Sam Booth as its first director of sustainability to spearhead its work at its venues and festivals . He tells Access about his work on an array of new initiatives and garnering robust data to formulate strategy
Words : Christopher Barrett
The many sustainability measures already taken by AEG Europe include powering events and venues with 100 % renewable energy sources , banning single-use plastic , promoting plant-based food , and even introducing an onsite wormery at The O2 arena ; which became the first arena in England to receive Greener Arena accreditation from A Greener Future ( AGF ).
Booth has more than a decade of experience working across high-profile event production and sustainability projects with major brands such as Nestlé , Adidas and Pernod Ricard . Here he outlines his priorities at AEG .
Since starting in the role at AEG what have been your priorities ? A new role is always an interesting one because you must spend a bit of time making sure the whole business is aware there is a new resource they can tap into . The amazing thing with AEG is that there ’ s so many passionate people in the business who were already doing great things before I arrived . The biggest thing I ’ ve
been tackling so far is helping our LA head office rebaseline . We ’ re doing a repositioning piece where we ’ re coming up with major goals for the global business and I am responsible for translating those into a European context and for different business units . I ’ ve been trying to get that big strategic piece done and nailed down so we can then spend the latter half of the year outlining new goals and a whole host of new initiatives .
Have there been any new sustainability initiatives at AEG venues and events in the UK this year ? We did a lot of work at BST Hyde Park on our waste handling and our power generation . We really focused on making sure all the waste was segregated properly , which involved
“ It ’ s amazing to see the buy-in from board level all the way through to the people on the ground .”
looking at all the bin systems , installing improved signage , and having crews of people at each bin helping to direct people . We also trialled a new battery system , which helped to supplement the generators we already have . We did a lot of test-
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