BE Offices announced as the winner of the Chairman’s Cup (small site category) at the City of London Corporation’s Clean City Awards.
BE Offices are delighted to have been recognised for their sustainability and climate action initiatives, winning the Chairman’s Cup at the prestigious City of London Clean City Awards, which took place at The Guildhall on Thursday 22nd February. The Chairman’s Cup (small site category) is a special award reintroduced for the 30th anniversary of the scheme.
This award recognises that smaller sites often don’t have a dedicated member of staff to make environmental improvements, with the work usually falling to engaged individuals and/or green teams which do the work in addition to their day jobs. It’s a great achievement for BE’s Green Group which was established in 2009, and which includes a representative from every department in the organisation, including our inhouse cleaning team, inhouse maintenance team, assets, facilities, accounts, sales and HR.
BE was chosen owing to its exceptional green credentials, which include operating on 100% renewable energy, a zero waste to landfill policy since 2015, installing motion sensor lighting to reduce energy consumption and investing over £1m in LEDs. A stand-out achievement has also been BE’s involvement at three of its sites with the Mayor of London’s Business Climate challenge to help organisations decarbonise their businesses by 10% per year. After very successfully participating in the pilot in 2021 at BE’s Borough building, when the scheme was extended to other London locations BE was able to add two further buildings to the programme. Not only has BE been able to reduce emissions at all three locations but learnings from the building audits have been very useful in other areas of its portfolio.
Judges were also impressed with the notable changes in behaviours amongst staff and clients and a keenness to take part in environmental volunteer days. BE saw a 520% increase in use of volunteer days in 2023, with staff taking part in beach cleaning on the Thame’s foreshore, planting trees on Camden Council Estates, community gardening and even painting and decorating an old school which is being converted in to free coworking space for climate action and social justice charities. These days have provided opportunities to informally educate staff about ESG while they are engaged in the volunteer activity as well as doing wonders for their mental health and wellbeing.
The Clean City Awards Scheme (CCAS), run by the City of London Corporation, helps to drive sustainable business by helping City of London organisations improve in the areas of climate action, and air quality, engagement and communication around sustainability, resource efficiency and a move towards circular economy practices, and a transition towards a plastic free city
City of London businesses can become a member of the scheme to apply for awards, access resources and attend the scheme’s environmental best practice meetings and workshops, which BE Offices has been doing for the last couple of years.
Previous winners of the Clean City Awards include the likes of Barings, The Bank of England, Brookfield Properties, Savills, Investec, Linklaters, the London Stock Exchange, Standard Chartered, Landsec, Nomura, Cushman and Wakefield, NatWest, ING Bank and BNP Paribas, among others.
Award Image Credit ©Clive Totman 2024
